The Foundations of Social Anthropology by S.F. Nadel

Author:S.F. Nadel [Nadel, S.F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136542770
Google: Sbf5AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T05:54:34+00:00

The first three formulae indicate that age sets (A) occur only if both other factors (P, B)—rigid clan segmentation and warfare—are present, and do not occur if only one is present. The two factors are therefore complementary determinants of the fact under investigation. The second group of formulae indicates that age sets occur when either of the two factors is present, so that these appear as alternative determinants. In the latter case it is possible that in the presence of both alternative determinants the fact under investigation reflects this double nexus, being more strongly pronounced than when only one determinant is present; for example, the age sets may in this case exhibit a more rigorous organization; this possibility is expressed by the plus sign in the last formula.

I am here using ‘determinant’ in a somewhat inaccurate sense. Assuming that age sets never occur without tribal warfare, while the latter can occur without age sets, then we shall clearly call war a determinant of the presence of age sets. If on the other hand the two facts always occur together (ceteris paribus), then they would appear to determine each other, being simply interdependent. And if we still called war the determinant and age sets the thing determined (as we shall probably do), then this interpretation would be derived from knowledge we possess independently of the situations analyzed, namely, from the general knowledge that war is likely to be in some way the primary factor, the thing that requires, and age sets the thing that meets the requirement. But this question bears on a wider one, namely the possibility of interpreting relations of interdependence in terms of causality.

Now, we might wish to pursue our multiple correlations much further and to examine the kind of thing into which age sets change in societies not operating with clan segmentation, belonging to a different level of technology, and perhaps no longer organized for war or a particular kind of war. Ultimately, we should arrive at the far-flung regularities we spoke of before, which govern not the species ‘age sets’, but the genus ‘organization of adolescence’ in widely different cultures and even in Society writ large. But, as I have suggested, there is a short-cut. For we can disregard the diverse settings, concerning ourselves only with two things—the social fact whose variations we wish to trace, and that other feature or set of features which we presume to be its correlate. Here the XYZ of our original formula means literally XYZ, that is, unknown ‘surrounding features’; all we know is that they differ in the different instances we examine. We can therefore no longer ab initio distinguish between unchanged background features and co-variants, and must fully rely on our initial hypothesis or suspicion.

The fact that we leave the diverse surrounding features unana-lyzed does not as such detract from the validity of the correlations we extract. On the contrary, it is because the correlation is established for a series of undefined situations that we can expect it to hold also for numerous others, and perhaps for ‘society at large’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.