A discussion of Arjun Appadurai and Roy Wagner's approach to context
Rie Raffing
6. semester, 2002, Institut for Antropologi,
Københavns Universitet
Course paper in the course: "Contextualizing Context"
Contents
Introduction
"At last you give up…"
Contextual Colonialism
Power to border and to name
The Purity Project
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
A proper theory of context has been conspicuous by its absence in much anthropological theory even though one of the forceful claims of the anthropological method is, that ethnographic material will make sense when seen in context. What is context then? Often context is not or very poorly defined. In this essay I will discuss how respectively Arjun Appadurai and Roy Wagner's approach to context can illuminate a potential danger in contextualization. This I will exemplify by a rather sad statement made by a young immigrant in Copenhagen whom I interviewed a few weeks ago. I do this on the basis of the general theme of this course paper, which is:
"Compare the way "context" is used in two/three of the texts on the course reading list. Explore the similarities and differences between the two/three perspectives, and suggest ways in which they might complement and/or constrain each other. You may write the paper in any form you like, but you should take as your point of departure and empirical, contemporary event" (Finn Sivert Nielsen).
"At last you give up…"
I met Emanuel a few weeks ago at his college where he is currently finishing his studies in medicine. Emanuel is in his late twenties. Twelve years ago he and his family fled Syria and was granted asylum in Denmark. We were talking about integration, a currently hotly debated subject in Denmark. During our conversation Emanuel expressed how he experienced that many Danes conception of "foreigners" is rigid and very categorical. To them "foreigners" is a group that is creating problems and is a strain on the Danish society. Largely the media forms this conception(1). Emanuel says:
"It is only the negative things being emphasized. The media they affect the people so much, even us foreigners, we really do begin to loose the general view. 'Foreigners in Denmark costs the government that much, the crime rate among foreigners is so high, unemployment', etc. One only hears what is negative. No matter how hard you try to defend it, at last you give up…"
Even though Emanuel has an idea of a general and more balanced view, he is affected by the negative attributes much of the media is ascribing "foreigners". There are three different contexts to be extracted from Emanuel's statement. The first I will call the "general view context". This is the context he is afraid of loosing because the media imposes another context on him, in which "foreigners" are presented negatively. We can call it the "media context". The last context I call the "defendant context". This is where he places himself, as a foreigner, and shows how it leaves him with an attitude of giving up, and loosing the general view. From this we can draw two elements of definition. First of all context is a frame. It is a boundary within something can be put in order to make sense. Secondly someone draws the boundary of context. This is an action of power. I here define power as the ability to control where to put boundaries despite resistance. In this case Emanuel tries to resist a part of the medias construction of a negative framework within which "foreigners" are presented.
Contextual Colonialism
Colonialism is a useful trope to use to underline the power aspect in contextualization. Two things in particular stand out; the power to border and the power to name and thereby possibly give positive or negative value to what the border contains. Both Arjun Appadurai and Roy Wagner have these two elements more or less emphasised in their discussions of context. I will here introduce Appadurai and Wagner's approach to context before I discuss their relevance to Emanuel's experience of a part of the media's one-sided presentation of so called "foreigners".
Appadurai argues in his article "The Production of Locality", that context is tightly related to locality. He defines locality as being primarily relational and contextual rather than as being scalar or spatial (Appadurai 1995:294). He contrasts this to neighbourhoods, which are the actually existing social forms. Furthermore he says that neighbourhoods are situated communities and that they are characterized by their actuality, whether spatial or virtual (Appadurai 1995:204). One of his main points is that neighbourhoods both are contexts and at the same time require and produce contexts (Appadurai 1995:209). What is important to this discussion is that Appadurai lines up a scenario where some contexts are being taken over by more powerful contexts: "The capability of neighbourhoods to produce contexts […] and to produce local subjects is profoundly affected by the locality-producing capabilities of larger-scale social formations […] to determine the general shape of all the neighbourhoods within the reach of their powers. Thus power is always a key feature of the contextual relations of neighbourhoods… (Appadurai 1995:211). Roy Wagner is in the second chapter of his book "Symbols That Stand for Themselves" (1986) introducing the idea of microcosm and macrocosm in order to discuss the process of naming. The name is crucial because it is a social point of reference (Wagner 1986:16). Put simply what Wagner is arguing, is that there in the macrocosm is an infinite number of resemblances. The flow of analogies is in itself unstoppable. The only way to establish a specific relationship to what one is referring to is by giving it a name. This will control the flow of analogy for social purposes (ibid). The microcosm is a way of narrowing down the macrocosm so that we can have an understanding. Let us now have a closer look on how these two theories can make sense of a part of the medias presentation of "foreigners".
Power to border and to name
The points I have presented from Appadurai and Wagner's texts are at first glance quite different, but as we shall see, they complement each other very well. At first glance it is Appadurai who, with his point about contextualization being tied to locality, has most to say about bordering and Wagner, with his discussion on naming, that has most to say about, - naming. With the image of the colonizer and his power to border and to name the colonized land we have a connection between the two. The colonializer in Emanuel's situation is a part of the media. The media has power to create borders around an imagined neighbourhood called "foreigners" and it has the power to label it with words such as "problem", "crime" and "unemployment". These words are taken out of the macrocosm of a myriad of different characteristics of foreigners but the flow of analogy is controlled like this for a social purpose. To make this social purpose stand out more clearly I will make use of an element of Benedict Anderson's discussion of imagined communities in the book by the same name. Anderson is arguing that the nation is imagined and that there are several elements making the imagination possible. One of them is the newspaper. Every reader is well aware that his action of reading the newspaper is being replicated by thousands of others that same day. S/he is confident of their existence but hasn't got the slightest notion of their identity (Anderson 1983:35). I will argue that repeatedly naming "foreigners" with negative words in the context of certain newspapers serves the social purpose of creating an imagined locality or community among the faithful readers of that particular paper. Being part of this imagined locality gives the reader a strong sense of identity. There is established a relationship of exchange among the newspaper and the reader; the reader finances the paper and the paper gives the reader a sense of identity. Before concluding on this paper I will briefly turn to Zygmunt Bauman to illuminate one last aspect of context.
The Purity Project
To round of my discussion of the potential dangers of contextualization I will make use of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and his discussion on the dream of purity in his book "Postmodernity and its Discontents". Bauman argues that thinking about purity demands an image of 'order' since the opposite of purity (the dirt) is 'out of place'. Moreover he says that it is whom he calls the purity-seekers who control the order of things. It is solely the location in the order of things that makes them into 'dirt' (Bauman 1997:6). "Things which are 'dirt' in one context may become pure just by being put in another place - and vice versa" (Bauman 1997:6). This is a very important statement because it pinpoints Emanuel's dilemma by being affected by the medias presentation of "foreigners" in the Danish society. His dilemma turns out to in capture the three different contexts referred to above where he is alternately pure and 'dirty'. I the general view context Emanuel is pure, in the media context he is 'dirt' and in the defendant context Emanuel is struggling to defend himself as pure within a context that defines him as dirt (the media context).
Conclusion
The concept of context has many advantages: A framework is created within which things are simplified, the flow of analogy is controlled, things or persons are named, order is created and understanding is given. But as I have shown in this essay, the concept of context can be abused. It is imperative to be aware of the fact that context is created by some one, in this case a part of the media that has an interest to sell more newspapers. They do so by creating a context in which "foreigners" are presented as being negative/dirt, something that is a strain to the Danish society. They are in opposition to the (Danish) reader who by reading the paper enters an imagined pure group identity. The media context has colonized the defendant context.
Bibliography
Anderson, Benedict (1991): Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, p. 1-15, London: Sage.
Appadurai, Arjun (1995): "The Production of Locality", in Richard Fardon (ed.): Counterworks. Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, p. 204-223, London & New York: Routledge.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1997): "The Dream of Purity", in: Postmodernity and its Discontents, p. 5-16, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hervik, Peter (1999): Den generende forskellighed. Danske svar på den stigende multikulturalisme, København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Wagner, Roy (1986): "Too Definite for Words", in: Symbols That Stand for Themselves, p. 14-33, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Notes
1. For a discussion on this subject see Hervik, Peter (1999): Den generende forskellighed.