OUTLINE OF A MODES-OF-PRODUCTION APPROACH TO IDEOLOGY, BELIEF AND RITUAL
Wim van Binsbergen & Peter Geschiere
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OUTLINE OF A MODES-OF-PRODUCTION APPROACH TO IDEOLOGY, BELIEF AND RITUAL Wim van Binsbergen & Peter Geschiere |
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Adapted from: W.M.J. van Binsbergen & P.L. Geschiere, 1985, ‘Marxist theory and anthropological practice: The application of French Marxist anthropology in fieldwork’, in: W.M.J. van Binsbergen & P.L. Geschiere (eds.), Old modes of production and capitalist encroachment: Anthropological explorations in Africa, London/Boston: Kegan Paul International, pp. 235-89; this extract p. 270-278, and notes/references on pp. 285-289.
The application of
the ideas of French Marxist anthropology to research in the
sphere of ideology (which we shall here limit down to belief and
ritual) poses a number of problems, which Marxist writers are
only beginning to explore. But, even in general, considering the
spate of descriptive anthropological publications on ideological
and religious subjects, values, world-views, etc., it is amazing
that the anthropological literature contains so very little on
the methodology of anthropological research on these topics.
Penetrating ideological complexes of thought and symbolic action
through participant observation remains a craft that is learned
not from books but by contact with experienced researchers, and
by personal trial and error. This is not the place to make up for
this general omission. We would rather explore how the Marxist
perspective on modes of production and their articulation, as
presented in this chapter and throughout the present book,
suggests specific questions as regards the ideological dimensions
of social life — and how these questions might be approached
in anthropological research.
Setting out on this course, we encounter a second difficulty. In
France, modern Marxist anthropology has primarily developed as an
attempt to come to terms with the economic organisation of local
communities, especially in Africa, trying to identify the
material aspects of production and reproduction, and the
relations of exploitation around which these revolve; a major
issue in this context has been the forms and effects of
capitalist encroachment. In the works of Meillassoux, Terray and
Rey, religion is either ignored or (see Terray 1979b) is treated
in a way which scarcely illuminates the place of ideological
elements within modes of production and their articulation.
Godelier is in a different position: his short articles on
religion (1975, 1977) pretend to offer a Marxist perspective, but
his approach is disappointingly idealist, and, besides, a
Godelierian idiom seems to contribute little that is not already
contained in mainstream anthropology of religion since Robertson
Smith, Tylor and Durkheim.
However, others working on the basis of a Marxist inspiration,
and utilising the concept of mode of production, have meanwhile
produced a limited number of analyses of the ideological
dimension within one non-capitalist mode of production; in this
respect reference could be made to the works of Bonte (1975),
Houtart, (1980), Houtart and Lemercinier (1977, 1979), Augé
(1975), and Bare (1977). Religious analyses cast in terms of the
articulation of modes of production within a social formation
were offered by Schoffeleers (1978) in his historical analysis of
a Malawian martyr cult, and by van Binsbergen in Religious
Change in Zambia (1981a). That book offers
an elaborate theoretical framework that enables us to interpret
the complex historical succession of major religious forms in
Central Africa since about 1500, and the contemporary
manifestations of these forms, as the ideological counterpart of
the emergence, articulation and partial decline of various modes
of production. The contemporary co-existence of all these
religious forms (transformed, no doubt, since they first appeared
on the local scene) is explained by the fact that today's complex
social formation still contains (again, in a transformed shape)
the various modes of production and the structures of
articulation to which these various religious forms belonged in
the first place.
These studies are specific applications of a more general Marxist
approach to ideology, whose classic statement is to be found, of
course, in Marx's analysis of the ideological dimension of the
capitalist mode of production (Marx 1973; Marx & Engels
1975). A number of leading ideas combine in this tradition.
Religion is seen as the ideological projection, into the
celestial and the unreal, of processes of appropriation and
exploitation that constitute Man's social life. Thus religion
appears as a structure of ideological reproduction: by reflecting
existing relations of production and by endowing the phantasms
thus produced with a unique, exalted sense of reality and power,
these relations are underpinned and carried over to new
generations (e.g. in rites of passage) and to other parts of the
world (cf. the spread of Islam and Christianity). Religion,
however, may take on an impetus of its own, and (in the hands of
elders, kings, priests, cult leaders) may stipulate a circulation
of producers and an appropriation of their surpluses which,
rather than reflecting relations of production that exist outside
the religious sphere, constitute relations of exploitation in
their own right. In this respect (the point is also stressed in
recent non-Marxist theories concerning so-called 'regional cults'
or 'territorial cults'; see Werbner 1977; Schoffeleers 1979; van
Binsbergen 1981: 252-5), religion may become a structure of
material production and exploitation sui generis Only a
sophisticated materialist theory of symbolism (whose development
is one of the most urgent tasks for contemporary Marxist social
science) will be able to explain how the unreal is capable of
imposing itself (either as a reflection, or sui generis) with
such vehemence upon the reality of material production and
exploitation. From this point of view we look at religion,
primarily, as a structure of ideological production, and we try
to classify the forms of such ideological production, and to
identify the rules and laws that govern it.
Throughout, the problem of religion from a Marxist point of view
might be summarised, in Bourdieu's words, as the problem of
identifying
'the transformation laws which govern the transmutation of the different forms of capital into symbolic capital. The crucial process to be studied is the work of dissimulation and transfiguration (in a word, euphemization) which makes it possible to transfigure relations of force by getting the violence they objectively contain misrecognized/ recognized, so transforming them into a symbolic power, capable of producing effects without visible expenditure of energy' (Bourdieu 1979: 83, emphasis added; cf. Bourdieu 1977).
However, we must not overlook the fact that such transmutation is
in principle a two-way process. For symbolic capital can also be
transmuted into material capital, as is demonstrated by so many
politically and economically successful ideological and religious
movements, from the Roman Catholic Church to the Bolshevik Party,
from the nationalist movement in colonial Africa after World War
II to the Muridiyya brotherhood which is less than a century
developed into a major economic force in Senegal.[1]
The dimensions of ideological reproduction, material production
and exploitation, and symbolic production suggest specific sets
of data which a Marxist researcher doing religious research would
primarily focus upon. The dimension of symbolic production would
appear to be the most difficult to tackle from a Marxist point of
view. Not only is it further removed than the other two
dimensions from the processes of material production habitually
studied by Marxist anthropology. Also, ideological production is
by its nature innovative, and often escapes from the
repetitiveness of social phenomena anthropologists look for in
the first place. Anthropologists engaged in religious research
are now beginning to realise that the power and the appeal that
are being generated in religious contexts derive not only from
more or less permanent structures (which the tradition of
religious anthropology has always stressed), but also from
creative and unpredictable, symbolic manipulation by means of
which religious actors captivate their audiences, presenting to
them a new and illuminating view of their personal condition and
of the world (see van Binsbergen and Schoffeleers (in press, b),
and references cited there). This so-called praxeological element
(which would equally be discernible in artistic production, or in
political oratory in a context of mobilisation for class, ethnic
and racial conflict) is realised in momentaneous transactions
between participants. Linking up with the language- and
culture-specific processes of communication between those
involved, it is eminently amenable for research by means of
participant observation in the field; but it is less easily
analysed in the terms that dominate structural Marxism.
Clearly, the underlying problematic here is that of the relative
autonomy of the symbolic order vis-_-vis material production and
exploitation. Symbolic production presupposes considerable room
for experiment, free variation, unsystematic and distorted
reflection of material reality, and hence a creative departure
from the objective structure of social reality as anchored in
relations of material production. For the anthropologist, this
means that he or she should detachedly and attentively study
symbolic phenomena in the field, before jumping to conclusions as
to their repetitive, systematic nature, let alone their
reflecting, in whatever dialectical way, the material structures
of production and exploitation. Ultimately, of course, Marxist
research into ideology should aim to reveal systematic
connections between symbolic and material structures;[2] and
for this purpose, the study of relations of material production
should occupy a very considerable part in any such research. From
an analytical and theoretical point of view, however, it would
appear as if the study of ideology, belief and ritual is in a
somewhat different phase from the study of exploitation,
reproduction, bridewealth and related topics well covered by
Marxist anthropological theorising. Both within and outside
Marxism the theoretical reflection on the ideological dimension
of social life is relatively underdeveloped. One explanation for
this state of affairs is that such theoretical reflection is in
itself a form of ideological production, and thus when brought to
bear upon other people's ideological production, raises immense
philosophical problems whose solution cannot be expected to come
from anthropological field-work alone (see chapter 6). This is no
reason to sit back and refrain from Marxist empirical research on
religion and ideology until the theorists have finished their
homework. But less than in other spheres of Marxist
anthropological analysis, a break-through in the study of
ideology can be expected from field-work alone.
The following
example, from the research of one of us in Zambia, may indicate
how the French Marxist perspective of an articulation of modes of
production can bring order to otherwise extremely confusing
ethnographic data collected in a contemporary setting. It
suggests some of the types of data an anthropologist working on
religious data in this approach would be advised to look for. In
this case, the empirical steps can be summarised as follows.
(1) One should try to
identify (through a study of symbols, participants' actions and
statements, processes of recruitment and control) the underlying
symbolic logic that is consciously applied by the participants in
their rituals, cults and religious conceptions.
(2) Rather than
assuming that in any historical social formation one and only one
symbolic logic is at work, one should make an effort to identify,
in the field data, any number of such logics: mutually
irreducible and contradictory, and each separately applied in a
distinct cult or ritual.
(3) Analysis of
non-religious data on production and reproduction within the
social formation under study should lead to the identification of
the various modes of production articulated (following a
historical process — to be studied by additional
historiographic research) within that social formation.
(4) The logics of
production and reproduction identified under (3) should then be
compared with the symbolic logics identified under (1) and (2),
in an attempt to relegate the various symbolic sub-sets
encountered in the field, to various modes of production and
their articulation.
(5) It should be
borne in mind that ideological reproduction (ideally resulting in
a one-to-one correspondence between symbolic and material logics)
is only one of the possible connections between the symbolic
order and the material order — in addition, ideological
production that has no clearly detectable material counterpart is
to be encountered, whereas the anthropologist may also come
across ideological structures sui generis: structures which
introduce an element of production and exploitation in the
religious field (e.g. appropriation, by cult leaders, of
surpluses produced by members of a cult in productive contexts
defined by that cult), again without a detectable counterpart in
structures of non-religious production and reproduction.
The contemporary religious situation among the Nkoya turned out
to be extremely confusing, as a considerable number of major cult
complexes existed side by side, and the same people would
participate in many or all of them apparently indiscriminately.
Thus the Litoya valley turned out to be the scene of (among minor
other types) the following ritual forms:
— ancestral
ritual, in which all members of a village would collectively take
part under the direction of the headman and other elders, in
cases of hunting trips, name-inheritance, and serious illness
supposed to have moral implications;
— rain ritual,
conducted by the valley chief and a few other headmen belonging
to the Kahare dynasty, at the previous chief's burial place;
— cults of
affliction, venerating not ancestors but alien spirits; these
cults, treating individual diseases devoid of any moral
implications, would be represented by independent cult leaders
who had been initiated into the cult in the course of some
earlier treatment. The cultic congregations of adepts would be
recruited from neighbouring and even more distant villages and
valleys, according to a pattern cutting across existing units of
production and reproduction;
— prophetic
cults of affliction, which differed from the non-prophetic ones
in that they venerated the High God, and that their cult leaders,
deriving their powers from a charismatic cult founder, would
belong to an interlocal cultic organisation which rigidly
controlled the cultic idiom and the flow of cash within the cult;
— Christian
churches and sects, primarily Watchtower and the Evangelical
Church of Zambia, which in many ways are comparable to prophetic
cults of affliction, except for the latter’s near-exclusive
emphasis on healing.
This outline does not cover the whole range of symbolic
expression, and particularly does not touch on divination and
sorcery control as engaged in by diviners and diviner-priests
(nganga); these activities, however, were largely of a technical
and individual nature, if they were not part of the cults
mentioned above.
Once the relevant ethnographic data had been collected, the five
major cult complexes clearly stood out. They defined different
sets of activities, organised differently. Each had its own
patterns of control over people and material resources, and
pursued a distinct idiom featuring different supernatural
entities, interpretations of human misfortune and ways of
redress. Some cults would stress morality whereas others would
not. Some had a strongly communalist view of the human individual
in that the misfortune of one of the members was supposed to
reveal a moral crisis affecting the entire group (ancestral
cult). Others would look at misfortune as a purely individual,
accidental and a-moral circumstance, to be redressed by appeasing
the vagrant spirit that had allegedly taken possession of the
patient (non-prophetic cult of affliction). The various complexes
seemed to represent, on the symbolic level, a number of mutually
irreducible logics, whose co-occurrence within one and the same
'culture' could not be explained in structural-functionalist
terms. For here the same set of people were operating, in cultic
complexes which were rigidly compartmentalised rather than
normatively or functionally integrated.
The pattern began to make sense once the various irreducible
logics underlying this contemporary religious plurality were
interpreted in terms of distinct logics of modes of production.
Ancestral ritual and chiefly rain ritual could easily be
identified as the ideological components of the 'lineage' mode
and the tributary mode respectively. They, in other words,
constituted clear-cut cases of ideological reproduction. The
individual-centredness of the remaining three cultic forms, their
lack of references to the processes of production (hunting,
agriculture) that went on in the local community, their
recruitment patterns which denied the units in which such
production was organised, their veneration of invisible entities
without local referents (such as chiefs and ancestors have), the
more or less bureaucratic organisation characterising the
prophetic and the Christian forms, and the extensive circulation
of cash in all three varieties suggested a dynamic beyond the
local horizon: processes of articulation, capitalist
encroachment.
Only after extensive historical research and further theorising
(which led to the idea that cultic forms might reflect not just
modes of production, but also the process of their articulation),
was it possible to relegate the contemporary cultic varieties to
specific modes of production in the articulation process of the
social formation of Kaoma district, and to establish a rough
periodisation for the emergence and decline of the various modes
of production involved. The original data, however, derived from
the contradictions encountered in the ethnographic data
themselves.
Interestingly, cultic forms, which originally reflect modes of
production and their articulation, turn out to replace in part
the very relations of material exploitation to which they
originally referred. Thus they come close to being sui generis
exploitative structures in their own right. Non-prophetic cults
of affliction, for instance, could be argued to have formed, at
the time of their emergence (in Kaoma district: late nineteenth
century), the ideological component of an articulation between,
on the one hand, mercantile capitalism (as locally represented by
alien traders), and on the other, a social formation comprising a
dominant tributary mode articulated to a 'lineage' mode. The
social formation today has a very different composition, and the
impact of capitalism has taken new forms. Yet these cults of
affliction continue to play an important part in the relations of
exploitation between elders and the youth: they provide a
structure through which the cash the youth earn in the capitalist
sector is siphoned back to the villages, as payment for the
activities of elders who are among the important cult leaders;
most cult leaders are elderly women and their cultic
administrations over female patients, for which the youth act as
sponsors, provide a grotesquely deformed mirror-image of the
relations of exploitation characteristic of the 'lineage' mode of
production (van Binsbergen 1981).
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[1] We concentrate on religion, although the problem of ideology is much wider than that, and includes, e.g., varieties of class consciousness, often appearing in a religious form.
[2]
We have Marx's word for it that this is even a relatively simple
exercise: 'It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis
the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than,
conversely, it is to develop from the actual relations of life
the corresponding celestial forms of those relations' (1973:
372-3, as quoted approvingly by Godelier 1977: 4). Unfortunately,
our task is made rather more difficult by the fact that religion
is not a self-evident category in social analysis. Nor can
religion (and this point is made repeatedly by Godelier: see
1978a, 1978b) always be neatly dissected from the processes of
material production and reproduction in a social formation: it
often forms a part of them (as stressed by Godelier— an
aspect we would term 'ideological reproduction'), and sometimes
generates them (under conditions we would describe as 'sui
generis').
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