For the introduction to the Round and Square series "Divinatory Economics," click here.
The next half-dozen posts center on a research question I have been pondering for some time—the way pilgrims spend their incense
on China's southern sacred mountain (南嶽衡山). I gave a lecture on the
topic at Erlangen University in November, and then expanded some of that
work into an Asian Studies Faculty Research Seminar—an ongoing series
in the Beloit College Asian Studies program—in December. Although I will
be continuing my research and writing on this subject, I thought that
this might be a good time to begin exploring in depth some of the implications of "divinatory economics." If you have not read the introduction to the series, I would recommend it as the place to begin.
If you have, settle in for a series of posts that describe the Chinese
mountains (the first post, below, re-covers some of the territory from
the Longevity Mountain series so that readers without that background
are "ready" to spend their incense). I have tried to make these posts reasonably entertaining—even the "theoretical" sections to come next week.
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| [a] Starting out RL |
Research Kindling
In 1783, Immanuel Kant wrote his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. He also bought a house in his native Königsberg. My ambitions are a good deal more modest on both counts. I have been researching social and ritual practices on the five “sacred” peaks of Chinese tradition for five years now, and have spent almost 400 days on the mountains during that time. The written work devoted to that project is an exercise in reflexive historiography and ethnography, and devotes one volume to each of the five mountains.
That's the "big" project—the thick logs of research that will keep me burning the home fires in my little library carrel for some time. Then there is the kindling. From many hundreds of pages of draft copy and notes, a number of smaller and more theoretically focused essays keep emerging, the recognized offspring of a vast project that will take me over a decade to finish. I have begun presenting lectures on these smaller projects in a window of time that I have created for my work during the last two years, since my last field trip to the mountains in January 2010. Since then, I have been writing, framing questions, and writing some more. This respite from mountain research has been much harder and more involved than simply climbing the steps to each peak and chatting with fellow hikers.
The situation in which I find myself calls to mind the words of the eminent anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard, whose work on African thought, society, and polity in the 1930s and 1940s transformed the fledgling field of anthropology. Writing later in his career about fieldwork and ethnography, he states that “…the decisive battle is not fought in the field but in the study afterwards…anyone can produce a new fact; the thing is to produce a new idea.” He goes on to say that the anthropologist needs ten years of writing for every year of research in the field:
Sometimes people say that anybody can make observations and write a book
about a [primitive] people. Perhaps anybody can, but it may not be a contribution
to anthropology. In science, as in life, one finds only what one seeks. One cannot
have the answers without knowing what the questions are. Consequently the first
imperative is a rigorous training in general theory before attempting field-research
so that one may know how and what to observe, what is significant in the light of
theory. It is essential to realize that facts are in themselves meaningless. To be
meaningful they must have a degree of generality. It is useless going into the field
blind. One must know precisely what one wants to know and that can only be
acquired by a systematic training in academic social anthropology.[1]
In 1783, Immanuel Kant wrote his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. He also bought a house in his native Königsberg. My ambitions are a good deal more modest on both counts. I have been researching social and ritual practices on the five “sacred” peaks of Chinese tradition for five years now, and have spent almost 400 days on the mountains during that time. The written work devoted to that project is an exercise in reflexive historiography and ethnography, and devotes one volume to each of the five mountains.
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| [b] Spent RL |
That's the "big" project—the thick logs of research that will keep me burning the home fires in my little library carrel for some time. Then there is the kindling. From many hundreds of pages of draft copy and notes, a number of smaller and more theoretically focused essays keep emerging, the recognized offspring of a vast project that will take me over a decade to finish. I have begun presenting lectures on these smaller projects in a window of time that I have created for my work during the last two years, since my last field trip to the mountains in January 2010. Since then, I have been writing, framing questions, and writing some more. This respite from mountain research has been much harder and more involved than simply climbing the steps to each peak and chatting with fellow hikers.
The situation in which I find myself calls to mind the words of the eminent anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard, whose work on African thought, society, and polity in the 1930s and 1940s transformed the fledgling field of anthropology. Writing later in his career about fieldwork and ethnography, he states that “…the decisive battle is not fought in the field but in the study afterwards…anyone can produce a new fact; the thing is to produce a new idea.” He goes on to say that the anthropologist needs ten years of writing for every year of research in the field:
Sometimes people say that anybody can make observations and write a book
about a [primitive] people. Perhaps anybody can, but it may not be a contribution
to anthropology. In science, as in life, one finds only what one seeks. One cannot
have the answers without knowing what the questions are. Consequently the first
imperative is a rigorous training in general theory before attempting field-research
so that one may know how and what to observe, what is significant in the light of
theory. It is essential to realize that facts are in themselves meaningless. To be
meaningful they must have a degree of generality. It is useless going into the field
blind. One must know precisely what one wants to know and that can only be
acquired by a systematic training in academic social anthropology.[1]
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| [c] Spending RL |
Precisely…and not exactly, as Evans-Pritchard himself states later in his essay. There, he notes that no amount of preparation could have readied him—among the groups he studied—for the relentless Zande focus on witchcraft and the Nuer obsession with cattle. To state it in brief, he rolled with the punches and wrote two compelling ethnographies about…well, witchcraft and cattle, among other themes.
I have thought about these matters a good deal recently, and not the least because, having taken off my hiking boots for a while, I have a great deal of time to think. Like many people trained in the anthropology of my generation, my background in “general theory,” as Evans-Pritchard quaintly terms it, has been reasonably thorough. Not only did I do my paces as an undergraduate (sociological theory, anthropological theory, and contemporary sociological theory), but Marshall Sahlins began his twenty week “graduate theory” sequence in 1987 with that formidable anthropologist John Locke. If I recall correctly, we reached Franz Boas in week eight. There will always be much more to read (and several things that are worth a second, third, or fifteenth review). Still, I take "general theory" pretty seriously.
That theoretical training contributed formidably to the way that I have researched and written about the mountain network I wish to call the five cosmological peaks. The “problem,” if it can be called that, is different. After returning to the United States and beginning to write about the mountains, that very same theoretical training started to pepper the notes, jottings, and even photographs that I had taken. In short, in reviewing my work (ostensibly in order to “write it up”), I had an experience for which none of my predecessors really trained me. Weber and Marx showed up in photographs that I thought were just trees and trail; Simmel and Mead emerged like so many "V" signs in Chinese pictures. Reading even the most straightforward fieldnote would bring visions of Edmund Leach, Jack Goody, or Maurice Godelier, not to mention Pierre Bourdieu. They were like little nuggets of firewood in my burning imagination.
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| [d] Fumes RL |
And then the kindling began to crackle over the flame.
New projects began to emerge, rising like so many Phoenixes from the incense-coated ashes of my notes. I paid attention, for more than one writer (and a few teachers) had told me over the years that I should never forget the possibilities of future projects being generated by serendipity—often when working on something else. Keep a notebook, they urged. Have a series of folders at the ready (computer or paper…or both), and jot something down for storage. Check, check. I did. Over the course of the last two years, I have generated several dozen of these topics, even as the “big” project just keeps on growing. My musings on "divinatory economics" are part of this plan—a way to develop some of the questions (remember Evans-Pritchard’s focus on getting the questions right) for future research on these topics that I—or others—can take back to the mountains and develop even further.
So, in the spirit of experimentation and grinding a spark here or there over dry branches, I wish to present some of my thinking and question-framing regarding a particular set of practices on the southern (sacred) mountain. These deal with the varieties of ways that people spend (money) for incense and then spend their incense at various temples on the way to the peak. Coming full circle with this introduction, I like to think of the sections that follow not (at all) as a set of results of research on mountainside ritual practices. That is yet to come. It is, rather, a way of crafting an approach to the question that will be of use for research in the months and years that follow.
Channeling Kant, I would like to think of what follows as my very modest Prolegomena to Any Future Divinatory Economics. It’s all about the questions, the framing, and the approach. Let's see where it takes us.
Notes
[1] E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft,
Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande Abridged, with supporting material, by
Eva Gillies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 240-241. Italics mine.
Bibliography
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft,
Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande Abridged, with supporting material, by
Eva Gillies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
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| [e] Unterwegs RL |
Sacred Mountain Spending
We'll look at two "extreme" ways in which various pilgrims "spend" their allotments of incense. These are not "typical." As historians and anthropologists know (and as more generalizing social scientists should realize), the atypical can speak volumes. These two "spending extremes" will do just that.
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