Bowlin Stromberg - Representation Reality Study of Culture

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Representation and Reality in the Study of Culture

Author(s): John R. Bowlin and Peter G. StrombergSource: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 123-134Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/682138 .

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IF THE INHABITANTSf another time and place useconcepts that we do not and give their assent to propo-sitions thatourlanguagedoes notpermitus to entertainas candidates for belief, how then can we translate theirsentences and interpret their utterances?l Willnot ourattempts inevitably reproduce our own cultural as-sumptionsand attitudes, at least to some extent? If so,must we then insist that different cultures constituteincomparable worlds? Indeed, does every attempt tounderstandthe utterances of a distant other inevitablyfall short, tripped up by the differences in language,belief, and sentimentthat divide differentcultures?These worries are obviously unsettling, and theyhave encouraged many to take comfort in various ac-counts of the originand significance of cultural differ-ence. In the broadestterms,culturalanthropologists nthe 20th century have adopted one of two positions onthis matter.The first, which we will call scientific real-ism, regards culturaldifference as an instance of scien-tific disagreement. Whenmembers of other societiesgive assent to beliefs that the best science cannot en-dorse they are, either tacitly or explicitly, consideredmistaken.2Scientificrealists arguethat the methods ofscience offer the best means of bringing the world torationalminds,just as the languageof science providesthe best medium for representingthe real world, theworld as it is in itself, to knowingsubjects.Culturaldifference, according to this view, is aconsequence of misapprehension,of failure to repre-sent the worldtruthfully,which inturn creates a specialtask for anthropologists and other social scientists.They are charged with describingthe social conditionsand psychological mechanismsthat make this or thatmisapprehensionpossible, perhaps even necessary, for

the properfunctioningof this or that culture.Thus theauthorityof science and the legitimacy of functionalexplanation n the social sciences go hand inhand.Whilescientific realists have perhaps always beenthe majorityparty among cultural anthropologists, analternative interpretation of cultural difference hasneverlacked forarticulatespokespersons,especially inNorthAmerica.Theparticularistic endency of Boasiananthropologyhas at times taken a radicalform as insome interpretationsof the Sapir-Whorf ypothesis inwhichculturaldifference is seen, at least potentially,ascultural ncommensurability.In recent years, new forms of antirealism haveappeared in anthropology. Drawing upon broadertrends in postmodern thought, contemporaryantireal-ists reactagainstscientific realismand cast doubt uponthe possibility, the justice, and the wisdom of repre-sentingother culturalworlds in the languageof Westernscience, advocatinginstead the epistemic authority of"localtruths,""multiplesubjectivities,""discursivere-gimes,"and the like.Manyscientific realists perceive these new posi-tions as an attack upon the entire scientific enterprise.MelfordSpiro (1996:771), unrepentant and articulate,speaks for many when he complains that postmod-ernistshave madescientific inquiryequivalent o story-telling,reducedrational choice amongcompetingtheo-ries to arbitrarypreference amongdifferentnarratives,andshroudedthe objective worldbehind the subjectiveinterests of the storytellers.Unfortunately, he contemporary debate has beenremarkablyunproductive. For the most part, scientificrealists and their postmodern critics have talked pastone another. At the root of much of this confusion is acollection of questions about representationand truth.Is our epistemic access to the world best described interms of representation? Are true beliefs those thatrepresentthe world as it is? Does modernscience pro-

JOHNR.BOWLINs an assistantprofessornthe DepartmentfPhilosophy ndReligion,Universityf Tulsa,Tulsa,OK 4104.PETER .STROMBERGs an associateprofessorn theDepartmentfAnthropology,niversityf Tulsa,Tulsa,OK 4104.

AmericanAnthropologist99(1):123-134.Copyright 1997, AmericanAnthropological ssociation.

JOHN R. BOWIIN / UNIVERSITYFTULSAPETER 6. STROMBERG / UNIVERSITYFTULSA

Re,|resentationn d Real i ty i nt h e S t u d y o f Sul ture


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124 AMERICANNTHROPOLOGISTVOL. 99, NO. 1 * MARCH997

vide the most faithfulmediumof representation? f eachof these questions deserves a negative reply, mustwethen abandon every hope for epistemic access to aworld independent of ourselves? Must we, in turn,shelve all talk of truth and falsehood, or at least restrictsuch talk to discursive systems with consensualepistemic standards?Finally, must we as a result forgoall inquiries hat trade in truthacross cultures?Inwhat follows, we drawupon the recent workofphilosopher Donald Davidson in order to argue thatdoubts about representation do not necessarily entaildoubts about epistemic access to the world, thattalk oftruthremainsunavoidableeven as the traditionalphilo-sophical way of making sense of that talk passes away.While t is indisputable hatwe must alwaysbe readytorevise any of the beliefs we consider true, ordinary alkand interpretation depend upon the conviction thattruth is one, not many. These argumentsmake muchcurrentdebate aboutrepresentation, ruth, andmethodin contemporarycultural anthropologyseem unneces-sary, or at least misframed.Importantmatters are atstake here, but they are not primarilyepistemological.Theyare, rather,moral andpolitical disagreements hatare best put in precisely those terms.This is our conclusion. Getting there will requirethat we work our way throughthe debate, sortingoutpositions and clarifyingconfusions on both sides. Webegin by considering some representativeattemptstospell out the consequences of refusing to accept whatscientific realists assume: that true beliefs are nothingbut the accurate representation of the world in themind.

Truthand Method among DomainsInhis lucid contribution o the widely cited collec-tion titled Wr7ing Culture(CliffordandMarcus1986),Paul Rabinow takes his lead from Richard Rorty's(1979) influential criticisms of all attempts to equateknowledge and accurate representation (Rabinow1986:234-235). But Rabinow adds that acceptingRorty'sconclusion "does not mean rejectingtruth,rea-

son, orstandardsof judgment" 1986:23S237). Buildingon both Hackingand Foucault, Rabinowsuggests thata propositioncan be considered true and that reasonscan be offered in its defense, within 6'specializeddo-mains.' A domainhas two principal features,both his-toricallyconditioned.First,a domain is a collection ofconcepts offeredin a particular anguage.Second it isan orderedset of epistemic authorities. Togetherthesefeatures enable certain propositions to be consideredcandidates for assent, while at the same time fixingroughstandards or establishing truthand adjudicatingconflicts amongbeliefs.

It follows from this that truth is many, not one.Since truth talk occurs exclusively within a particulardomain and since domains can vary significantly indifferent times and places, it follows that there are"differenthistorical conceptions of truth and falsity"(Rabinow 1986:237).There is no realm of the true thatcan guarantee the traditionalbelief that truth is one.Rather, there are as many truthsas there are domainswhere truthis distinguished romfalsehood. Of course,one alwaysfinds oneself withina particulardomainandthus one must inevitably consent to "thediscipline ofone's own standards of truth and reason" (Rabinow1986:238).3Nevertheless, we should steel ourselves tothe fact that "otherproceduresand other objects couldhave filled the bill just as well and have been just astrue"(Rabinow1986:237).Hereone mustagree withthe scientific realistwhomight characterize as disingenuous Rabinow's assur-ances that his views do not entailabandoning nquiriesthat tradein truth. Indeed,they do. For to say that someproposition is true or false entails believing that theworld has certain features,thatits character s this andnot that. To think otherwise, to believe that truth talkcan proceed apartfrom this belief, is to fail to under-stand what is implied when we say that something istrue. It is to misunderstandhow we use the concept. Itfollows that the ordinary enterprise of asserting thetruth of some proposition, a proposition that otherseither deny or cannot imagine, is quite incompatiblewith maintaining belief in multiple worlds, multipletruths.4Asserting the truth of some proposition is in-stead dependentuponbelievingthat the world has fea-tures that others might not grasp. To insist that truthtalk can only proceed within local epistemic domains,as Rabinow does, is thus equivalent to insisting thattruth talk cease altogether.Otherscope with representationalism'sdemise byattemptingto bracket talk of truth altogetherin cross-cultural nquiry. n anotheressayfrom WritingCulture,Talal Asad (1986) argues that since all believing is do-main relative and power tainted, all cross-cultural in-quiries that trade in truth- includingboth moral criti-cism andscientific evaluation are wrongheaded.Theyare wrongheaded, accordingto Asad, because theypre-suppose the truth commitmentsand epistemic authori-ties of a particulardomain. This means that, when wecriticize and evaluate the beliefs and practices of an-other domain, with its own commitmentsand authori-ties, we arbitrarilyprivilege our own. As a result, littleunderstandingof what they believeand do is achieved.Rather,we simply assert that by our lights "whattheybelieve is quite wrong" Asad1986:154).Thi$verdict prompts Asad to conclude that "goodcritique is always an 'internal'critique"and thereforecross-domain inquiries should forgo criticism alto-


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gether, attending insteadto understandingalien beliefsand practices (1986:164). Evaluation should be re-placed with translation,where the meanings implicit inone cultural domain are fixed in the language and con-cepts of another, presumably our own (1986:156). Butthis course presents Asad with difficulties, largely be-cause of his account of meaning.Asad regards meaning as an intention that aspeaker conveys in the concepts of a particulardomain,with its unique epistemic authorities, social practices,and forms of life (1986:156-157).It follows that transla-tion is largely a matter of transplanting an intentionfrom its original language and concepts into the lan-guage and concepts of a new domain. Here troublesappear. Since a domain is not simply a conceptualscheme where language and belief reside but also anexpression and instrument of power, Asad contendsthat the language and concepts of the ethnographer'smore powerful domainwill, more often than not, deter-mine the meaning of the utterance under translationbydistorting its intention. Hewrites, '4The thnographer'stranslation/representationof a particular culture is in-evitably a textual construct2' and therefore it is theethnographer who has "finalauthority in determiningthe subject's meanings,"who 6'becomes he real authorof the latter"(1986:162-163). Meanings are not trans-lated, but created and imposed.Call this tragic ethnocentrism, where "the anthro-pological enterprise ofcultural ranslation" s "vitiated"at every turn by the unavoidable dependence of beliefand meaning upon power and social context (Asad1986:164).Can this tragedy be averted? Asad thinks itcan, but only if anthropologistsexperiment with inquir-ies that abandon altogether "the representational dis-course of ethnography," eplacing t with dramaticper-formance a dance or a piece of music. Here the hopeis to supplant the translation of meanings with ethno-graphic expressions that might aintroduce or enlargeculturalcapacities, learnt rom other ways of living, ntoour own" (Asad 1986:160).Such hermeneuticalenrichmentof one languagebyanother is a perfectly laudable activity, but it will notresolve Asad's worries about meaning and distortion.5So long as one considers meaning an intention that canbe represented in language or expressed in perform-ance, so long as there are competing languages andmultiple modes of expression, meanings will be threat-ened with distortion as they are transposed from theirdomain of origin nto new domains,whether hermeneu-tically enriched or not.While Rabinow and Asad evidently agree that a"crisisof representation" hreatens, neither seems will-ing to reevaluate the philosophical assumptions thathave brought us to this theoretical impasse. They findfault with realist accounts of human knowing, they

promise to retain some form of cross-cultural nquiry,yet in the end they do not provide a workable approachto such inquiry.No wonder scientific realists like Spirohowl in protest.

Belief, Truth,and the WorldAlthough Rabinow and Asad differ in importantways, they share a basic assumption. Theirviews are inone respect only a well-articulatedversion of a widelyaccepted anthropologicial piety, the belief that differ-ent cultures, different times and places, and differentpeoples diverge significantly in belief and sentiment.WithCliffordGeertz, they endorse the conclusion that"humanity s as various in its essence as it is in itsexpression" (Geertz 1973:37). So significant are theseculturaldifferences, or so it is assumed, that Rabinow,

Asad, and others find it natural to speak of fundamen-tally different epistemic domains, each with its ownlinguistic conventions, candidates for assent, hierarchyof epistemic authorities, and microdynamicsof powerand knowledge. Following their lead, many contempo-rary anthropologists express uneasiness about cross-cultural inquiries that trade in truth, inquiries thatevaluatethe ontological commitments and moral senti-ments of other peoples. Inquiriesof this sort should beavoided precisely because they invariably privilege aparticulardomain,with its uniquebeliefs and epistemicauthorities,at the expense of another. Indeed, we haveseen that once domains are considered multiple anddistinct, it becomes easy to conclude that beliefs can beconsidered true or false and moral practices judgedgood or evil only within the confines of their epistemicdomain of origin.Wehave already noted that confining truth talk inthis way is incompatible with our everyday use of theword true. Why not then follow Asad's suggestion andsalvage anthropologicalpractice by excluding truth alkand bracketing moral evaluation altogether while pur-suing meaning and mapping belief as best we can?Unfortunately, his will not work either, precisely be-cause we cannot hope to understand any utteranceapart from assessing truth value. Meaning and belief,always and everywhere, come packaged together withtruth.Thispoint comes in large measure from our read-ing of Donald Davidson's work, and the following ac-count is a simplified summaryof what we take to be hisposition.According o Davidson (1986:442),we cannot hopeto understand a speaker's "unfamiliarnoises" (Rorty1987) without making guesses- "passing theories" inhis terms-about what he or she believes. At the veryleast, we must make assumptions about what a speakeris able to believe, the propositions that he or she is able


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to consider as candidates for assent. For only thisknowledgecan fix the rangeof possible interpretationsthat we might give an utterance. Furthermore,sincebeliefs dependuponeach otherfor warrantandassent,theycannotbe assignedone by onebut onlyholistically.That s, one cannot assign a particularbelief withoutatthe same time assigning many others. But this meansthat one cannotunderstandany utterancewithoutfirstknowinga greatdealaboutwhat aspeakerbelieves.Thefact that communicationcan take place impliesthat inpracticewe proceedby makingeducatedguesses aboutbelief. Thus, Davidson (1984a, 1990) suggests that webegin by limiting the possible range of meanings at-tached to our interlocutor'sutterances, and we limitpossible meaningsby assuming that his or her beliefsare muchthe same as our own.By Davidson's lights (1990:129-130),justificationfor this assumptionfollows fromthe fact that the truthconditionsof many, f not most, sentences arestates ofaffairsin the world that consistently promptassent tothose sentences. Belief, it turns out, follows what theworld does. When a largetree falls on the leg of one ofthe speakers we are trying to understand,crackingbones andspillingblood, we assume thatat least someof the utterances that follow are about trees and painand legs. And since beliefs are assigned as utterancesare interpreted,to say that some of the sentences areabout trees andpain and legs implies that some of thespeaker'sbeliefs are about the same (1990:129-130).Caution s requiredhere, andon threecounts.First,to say that the worldpromptsassent-that it causes usto have beliefs about what it does is to say nothingepistemological,andthus we arenot proposingany sortof empiricismhere. Beliefs cannot bejustified by con-ditions in the world, at least not in the sense that aninterlocutormightjustify our beliefs. The world doesnot provide warrantsfor what we believe about it. Itdoes not offer reasons in defense of this or thatbelief.Only other beliefs can do that. When asked why webelieve that our comrade is in pain, we look not to theworldforjustifyingreasons but to the otherthingsthatwe believe. The tree was large, the bone has brokenthroughthe skin, he or she is grimacing,and so on.Second,to say that the worldgeneratesbeliefs thatindividualspeakers consider true does not imply thatthe world makes true beliefs true, if only because noone yet has been able to say what this mysteriousrela-tion called "making true" might entail (Davidson1984b).Instead,the relationbetween worldand beliefthat Davidsondescribes is causal. The world'svarioushappenings.causeus to believe this andnot that.A treefalls, crushingthe person on the trailahead. Thiseventpromptsall sorts of particularbeliefs and sentimentsthat we could not have had without the worldlurching

about in this particularway.Nofallingtrees,no crushedlegs, no particularbeliefs abouteither.And last, to say that the world causes belief is notequivalentto sayingthat the world determinesthe spe-cific content of what we believe. It does not; it cannot.The world lurches about, and we respond with belief,but the world does not simplydeterminethe characterof that response, just as it does not simply determinethe characterof sentiment or indigestion.All three arecaused by aspects of the world andyet insofaras theyare our responses to its promptings,their characterisconditioned by our own peculiarities, including theotherbeliefs thatwe happen o have. Inshort,the causalconnection between world andbelief is indexical. Thesky darkens at midday,causing some to respond withbeliefs about the alignmentof heavenlybodies, otherswith beliefs about spiritual beings. The world causedboth beliefs, but it did not by itself determinethe con-tent of either. As a result we cannot look to the worldto adXjudicatehe conflict amongthe beliefs it causes.We cannot hope that the ordinarycausal connectionsbetween worldandbelief will solve ourepistemologicalpuzzles. For this hope assumes that the world can tellus what particularresponse is best to have, and theworldis silent about the particulars.We need not be. We can justify our particularre-sponses by referring o the other thingsthatwe believe:there are no such spiritualbeings, astronomerstell usthat we were due for an eclipse, and so on. Of course,thesejustifyingbeliefs will themselves be caused by theworldas well, butthis is as we wouldexpect. In one wayor another, all of our beliefs are, both those we sharewith others and those we do not. Nevertheless, weshould expect to share most of our responses to theworld's promptings with most of our fellow humanbeings most of the time. Response ts agent-relative;differences will arise, but only case by case. For themost part, the world bears down on us pretty much asit does on everyone else, andwe respondwith belief inconcert with the rest because all of us alike are crea-tures of one sort and not another, withpowers, capaci-ties, and frailties characteristicof our kind.It is this expectation that allows us to proceed inthe task of interpretingthe utterances of another. Itdirectsus to attendto those utterancesto which speak-ers give assent as a result of the world's promptings.6These utterances are understood, that is, belief is as-signed and meaninggrasped,because we assume thatassent is caused by the things in the world that theutterances are about. And since the world normallyprompts us in the same way, we have good reason totreat speakers charitablyand assume that their beliefsabout this corner of the world, this bit of humanlife,trackour own, at least forthe most part. Davidsonputsit this way:"Communication egins where causes con-


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verge: your utterancemeans what mine does if belief inits truth s systematicallycaused by the same events andobjects" (1990:132).Once we have located this kind of agreement inbelief about a sufficient number of coIners and bits,interpreting the complete variety of another's utter-ances can proceed as it always does, with guesses thattake us forward and backbut with the confidence thatour guesses cannot be too far off so long as they do notstray too far from the beliefs that we both consider true.Note then that by this account any sort of commu-nication can proceed only to the extent that the inter-preter has committed him-or herself to the likely truthof his or her interlocutor's utterances. As Davidsonwrites, anytime communication s attempted, "there sa pretty strong sense in which we can be said to knowthat there is a presumption in favour of the overalltruthfulness of anyone's beliefs, including our own"(1990:128). Of course, some might protest that we canonly presume shared belief, not truth, that we shouldremain agnostic about the truth status of the beliefs weshare with ourinterlocutor.No doubt we should remainagnostic about the truthstatus of those beliefs we as-sent to in the absence of good reasons.7 But thosebeliefs that we hold withgood reasonX r have no goodreason to doubt, we do in fact call true. Agnosticismhere would be inappropriate, orced. Thus f we assumea speaker believes whatwe do about some matter, henwe must complimenthis orher beliefs as we do our ownand call them true.

It follows from all this that when anthropologistsof an antirealist bent encourage exclusive attention tomeaning while bracketingquestions of truth and false-hood, they urge animpossibility,because interpretationof any sort gets underway only as we assume broadagreement n beliefs considered rue. To repeat, we havegood reason to assume such agreement because theworld normally affects other human beings as it doesus, causing them to believe pretty much what we do.8Of course, it may turnout that maximizingsharedbelief in this way yields mistaken interpretations inparticular nstances. It is certainly possible that fallingtrees and cracking bones fail to prompt the assent ofour interlocutors to the beliefs we might expect but nomatter. Interpretationproceeds holistically, never sen-tence by sentence, and therefore we only need to as-sume that the worldprompts heir assent as it does oursin most cases. In fact, as Davidson points out(1990:132-133) we are able to notice mistakes and re-vise interpretations precisely because we are rightabout most of the rest. Andwe can be confident that weare right about the remainderbecause we know that theworld normally fixes theirbeliefs as it does ours.To be sure, not all beliefs are prompted by theworld in a straightforwardway. All are caused in part

by what happens in the world, but some have causalhistoriesthat are more complicated than others. In fact,most of the beliefs we most hope to comprehendhavecausalhistories of this complicated sort: Chukeheecos-mology, Ifaluk moral psychology, Tamil nationalism,and so forth. Nevertheless, it is our attention to beliefswith more mundane causal relations to the world thatprovidesthe basis for considering those sentences andbeliefs "less directly geared to easily detected goings-on" Davidson 1990:130). t is throughour translationofthe mundane hat we build a bridge between their utter-ances and ours.Imagine you know nothing about the religion andculture of ancient Greece. Imagineyou come across thefollowing remark in the Iliad: "Athena .. swoopeddown fromheaven through the upper air, like a shriek-ing, long-wingedbird of prey" 19.391-392). How wouldinterpretationproceed? How would you come to under-stand that Athena is a goddess doing the sort of thingthat Greek gods and goddesses do? Surely you wouldbegin by finding your feet in Homer's account of theordinarydetails of human life, where the world bearsdown upon the body in familiar ways. Paris ran andwearied. Achilles fasted and became thirsty. Hectordied andHecuba suffered. With he mundanemastered,you could then ascend Olympus, for the gods are notconfined in space or tied to the earth. Without ourfrailties,they never weary, never thirst, never die.Thepoint that needs emphasis here is that in inter-preting the utterances of another, we must not fall intowhat Davidson calls the "fatalerror"of assuming that"we can in general fix what someone means inde-pendently of what he believes and independently ofwhat caused the belief" (1990:131). It indeed may betrue that, after we begin to speak a language, we caninquire nto a person's beliefs directly and neglect theircauses. Yetto forget the role of causation n fixing beliefandintexpretingutterances only distorts what happenswhen understanding is achieved. For ultimately onething alone allows us to "identifybeliefs and meanings,"and that is our common humanrootedness in the world,a rootedness that compels us to conclude that in allplaces "belief is intrinsically veridicalb (Davidson1990: 35).9

Skepticism and DifferenceTheimmediate fallout from all of this is that mean-ing, belief, and truth are assigned together or not at all(Davidson1990:132),and therefore the desire to recastthe study of culture apart from talk of truth cannot becarried through without abandoning inquiry of everysort. But what of the considerations that led to thisdesire in the first place? What of the assumptions that


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generateskepticismregarding ruth?Davidsongives usgood reason to put aside these assumptions,this skep-ticism. If we cannothope to find our feet withthose wewish to understandwithout assumingthat they sharemany,perhapsmost, of our beliefs, then talk of funda-mentallydistinct epistemic domains, ncommensurableconceptual schemes, or "differenthistorical concep-tions of truth and falsity"(Rabinow 1986:237)makeslittle sense. Moreprecisely,the facts of epistemic diver-sity, such as they are,do not compel us to these notionsas explanationsfor the data (Davidson1984a).Of course we may still find it useful to speak ofmultiplelanguagesand differentcultures,but this talkis loose and harmless. Candidatesfor belief and reper-toires of sentiment vary with time and place to somedegree and thus understanding s, at times, difficult.l?In these circumstancesdistinguishingculturesandlan-guages seems sensible, not as a hypothesis to explaindisagreementthat goes all the way down but ratherasa wayto markour difficulties.Thework of ethnographyis simplythe attemptto resolve some of these difficul-ties.ll Otherworries fall with this one. If little sense canbe made of multipleschemes and distinct domains,thenwe need not share the worry that meaning is eitherdistorted or constructed when we translate an utter-ance from one language o another.In fact, if we cannotregarddifferent languages and cultures as fundamen-tally different conceptual schemes, then we cannot re-gardmeaningas anintentionexpressedin the conceptsof one language and threatened with distortionwhentransplanted n the languageand concepts of another.We cannot say that a meaning is grasped when aspeaker's intention has been removedfromhis or herlanguage and represented in ours because we cannotthink of our language as a medium of representationfundamentallydifferentfrom his or hers (Rorty 1991).Indeed,Davidson'sdoubts about multipleschemes anddistinct domains make it impossible to regardrepre-sentation as the heart of the ethnographicenterpriseprecisely because it removes the whole conceptual ap-paratus that enabled us to think that understandingfollows from moving intentions from languageto lan-guage.By the same token, it preventsus from believingthat the enterprise is threatened with what Rabinowcalls the "current risis of representation" 1986:251).No doubt we often fail to understandthis or thatconcept. Whenwe try to mingle with native speakers,they chuckle at ourclumsyefforts.But notice we do notneed a grand theory about multiple languages, repre-sentation, and unavoidable distortion in order to ex-plain this difficulty.We need not resort to apocalyptictalk of crisis. Both tempt unnecessarydespair.We sim-ply need to point out that some concepts areunfamiliar(e.g., charmedquarksin quantumphysics) or compli-

cated (e.g., nunuwan in Ifalukmoral psychology). Theimportantones tend to be both. Understanding he lat-ter sort of concepts, usingthem as native speakers do,will often requiremuchattentionand reflection, as wellas repeated tinkeringwith our dictionaries,occasionalrevision of entrenched belief, and bursts of linguisticinnovation. Good ethnographyhas no other way ofproceeding.

Scientific Realism and Reactionary AntirealismIf the argument o this point is sound,then we havegood reasonto set aside antirealistaccounts of anthro-pological practice, good reason to bypass antirealistproposals for its reform. Are we then compelled toaccept realism's alternative account of the place oftruth alkin anthropological nquiry?Weare not. In fact,

we find that realists and antirealists share more thanmost imagine,and most of whatthey sharestandsin theway of understandingethnographicpractice.Realists, accordingto ArthurFine (1986), believethat the world has a definite structure,with propertiesand relationsthatexist quite apartfrom human houghtand action. Theybelieve that we have epistemic accessto this structureand that sentences aretrue when theyaccurately represent or correspond to particularfea-tures of it. By their lights,it is this correspondencethatexplains what makes a true sentence true (Fine1986:137).The problem with realism as many havepointed out, is that little sense can be made of thenoncausalrelationbetween ourbeliefs and the world'sdefinite features calledaccurate representationor cor-respondence.l2Wesimplycannot umpout of the world,gaze down at its features, and confront them with ourbeliefs, all in the hope of determiningwhether corre-spondence obtains. It follows that we cannot appealtocorrespondencein orderto explainthe characterof thesentences we considertrue. Whenrealistsinsist that wecan, we should, following Fine and Rorty, take theirremarksto be merely incantatoryand percussive: anendless chant of ubafflingwords"(Rorty 1991:6)punc-tuated by "a desk-thumping,foot-stomping shout of'Really'"(Fine 1986:116n.4, 129),all uttered inthe hopethat we mightbe confidentthat the beliefs we considertrue are about states of affairsthat ;'reallydo exist."Thus we urge the abandonment of "representa-tionalist" views, of the idea that nonlinguistic entitiesmake sentences eithertrue or false by success or failurein correspondence. We do not, however, recommendcontemporaryantirealismas an alternative.Accordingto Rorty(1991:2),antirealists doubtthatthereare "mat-ters of fact" aboutthe world or about a speaker'sinten-tion that true statementsrepresent.This doubt followsfrom assumingthat conceptualschemes (whatwe have


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been calling epistemic domains) flourish among us,each able to influence what they represent to somedegree, effectively eliminating our access to undis-torted facts and intentions. As Fine (1986:140) pointsout, this antirealism is largely a reactionaryproposal,offered not because of its own virtues but because itavoids the metaphysicalvices of realism.l3But whilerealism is indeed flawed, it is not vitiated for reasonsmost commonly offered by anitrealists, reasons thatwould compel us to accept some version of antirealism.That is, realismdoes not fall because multipleconcep-tual schemes, cultures, or languagesstand between usand the world, inhibitingour undistortedaccess to it.Rather,realism stumbles for the same reason that an-tirealismdoes. Both 4'amplifyhe concept of truth"be-yond its ordinary implicity,realisnl byofferinga theorythat explains what makes our true sentences true, an-tirealism by offering a conceptual analysis of what itmeans to say that a sentenceis true(Fine 1986:133, 42).In this way, realism and antirealism can be said toshare an importantassumption. Both regardtruth as a'ssubstantial omething"about which one might have atheory or provide an analysis (Fine 1986:142).In thisagreement, both fail to see that truth, in Davidson'swords, "is as clear and basic a concept as we have"(1990:135), our "fundamental semantical concept"(Fine 1986:149).As such, it can be neitherexplained nordefined without vicious circularity,without assumingthat we understand t well enough andapply it success-fully in the theory that is supposed to account for it(Fine 1986:149;Davidson1990:135).Ofcourse, the simplicityof truthdoes not preventus fromoffering aWittgensteinianheory of the conceptin use, which would in fact be no different than anethnography of speakingthat attended to truth talk: adescription of the job the notion does for us.l4 In thisrespect, truth is no differentfrom any other concept.Like baseball, sunscreen, and bleachers, those whohave mastered the concept use it in this way and notthat. A good account of the concept will describe howthat is. The simplicity of truth does, however preventus frompursuingthe sorts of explanatorytheories thatwe have examined here: realist theories that explainhow the world makes our true beliefs true, as well asantirealist theories that explain what it means for abelief to be true by referring o whatwe arejustified inassertingwithin discrete domains.This temptationto explain truth,shared by realistsand antirealists reveals one final point of agreementamongthem. Bothfind the relationbetween our beliefsand the world troubling, and thus both find reason todoubt the veracity of even our most common commit-ments. Wehave seen that this skepticism comes easilyto antirealists. Once they contend that multipleschemes intervenebetweenbelieversand the world this

doubtfollows almost automatically.Unable to resolvetheir skepticism about unambiguousconnections be-tween the world and true belief, antirealists take com-fort by redefining truth as a relation among beliefswithin a domain.l6By the same token, realists takecomfort in a correspondencetheory of truth preciselybecause they worry that something like a conceptualscheme standsbetween us andthe world,blocking ourunmediatedaccess to it. Correspondence heorieshopeto quiet these doubts by reestablishingthat access. Itseems, then, that the only thing that divides realistsfrom antirealists is an attitude toward a human lifebound by conceptual schemes that threatenaccess tothe world. Realists consider it a prison house (Stout1988:57-59);antirealists do not.

Anthropological racticeWhat are the implications of these thoughts foranthropologicalpractice? On the one hand we hope tohave demonstrated that it is mistaken, and in someinstances disingenuous, to pretend that an utterancecanbe understoodapartfromjudgmentsabout its truthvalue. Indeed, to think otherwise, to think that we canandshouldbracketquestionsof truth n interpretation,encouragesus to misunderstandwhatactuallyhappenswhen communication of any sort proceeds. On theother hand, we have argued that accounting for thisunavoidable truth talk by resorting to a theory that

explains what makes an utterance true is an unproduc-tive enterprise.Indeed, we hope to have demonstratedthat it is faith in this folly that realist and antirealistshare. Bothregardculture as a puzzlingset of epistemicpractices that need the kind of elaboration hatexplana-tory theories of truth hope to provide (Fine 1986:148).In fact, there is no such need. Instead, what isneeded is a ratherbanal attitude towardethnographicinquiryandits conclusions. Call it a naturalontologicalattitude, NOA("noah") or short. The phrase is ArthurFine's (1986),who encourages a similarattitudetowardinquiries in the naturalsciences. A NOArecommendstruth talk withouttheory. The beliefs we consider trueare those we have good reason to maintain.Most truebeliefs are distinguished from falsehoods by the goodreasons that justify them.l6And since what we havegood reason to believe today may turn out to be falsetomorrow, all that we believe must be consideredrevis-able, even the most certain truths. Nevertheless, whatwe are justified in believing now is what we considertruefor now, that is, until different warrantsarise. Themean to strike is between incorrigibleconfidence andmind-numbingkepticism. Callit epistemic humility.l7Thebeliefs of inhabitantsof other times andplacesshould be treated in similar fashion, with a similar


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130 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 99, NO. 1 * MARCH1 997

humility.Good reasons offer the best pathto the truth,but good reasons can nevertheless fall short of it. Thisholds for them as well as for us. Since we must assigntruthvalue to many of the sentences we are tryingtounderstand,we will inevitablyfind ourselves conclud-ing that the membersof other societies, at times, holdmistaken beliefs. Their good reasons are not goodenoughto trackthe truth.If this is a kindof ethnocen-trism,it is nevertheless necessaryand largelyharmlessin its effects if only because callinga belief false is notequivalent o distributingblame,moralor epistemic.Tosay that members of anothersociety hold false beliefsabout this or that is not equivalent to calling themirrationalor any other pejorativeepithet. In fact, if wegive sufficientattentionto the other thingsthey believe,we will find that, in most instances, their false beliefsare held for the best reasons available to them.It follows that it is not unfairto call the beliefs ofothers false. Rather, it is unfairto fail to ask whetherthey have good reasons to believe and act as they do.Andnote, this failureis a moral one, not an epistemo-logical howler, a failure of imaginationand attention,not the consequence of bad theory.Moreover, t is theonly sort of ethnocentrism worth fearing. The othersort, the sort that manyantirealistswarnus against,thesort that follows from thinkingthat multiple domainsmake truth relative, is nothing but a chimera of badepistemology.Good ethnographyrequiresclose attention to be-lief and its warrants,and we agree with critics such asAsad (1986) who caution that political circumstancesmaysystematicallyobstructsuch attentiveness.Thus itshould regularlyoccur that good ethnographyencour-ages us to conclude that the beliefs andwarrantsheldby members of another society track the truth betterthan our own. We may be led to rethinkwhat we con-sider true. An ethnographysufElcientlyhumble aboutmatters of belief must concede this possibility andshould regardthis kind of critical revision of our ownbeliefs as a welcome consequence of carefulinquiry.Overall, t should be apparentthat a NOAwill en-courageus to describe the desire to understand hat isat the heart of ethnographic nquiryn rather raditionalterms.It is a desirefortruth: hetruthaboutwhatothersthink and feel and do, the truthabout the reasons thatjustify their thoughts and actions, and the truth aboutour relationsto them. A NOAwillnot, however,encour-age us to resort to the scientific realist's traditionalexplanation of success in that search. For as we haveseen, it makes little sense to regardthe judgmentsweconsider true as instances where mindand world arebrought nto correspondencethroughthe mediation ofa neutralscientific language.Norwill a NOA estrictthesearch for truth to discrete domains, as antirealistsrecommend, f only because carvingup human anguage

and experience in this way proves more troublethanitis worth.To close with the concrete concerns of anthropo-logical practice, what does our perspective say aboutemployingWesternconcepts in the study of non-West-ern groups? For example, what course does it recom-mend in the recent debate over applyingEnglish emo-tion terms such as anger in describingsocieties whereEnglish is not the primary language?l8It is by nowwidely remarkedand agreed that different languagesmay name emotions in differentways, so that to trans-late an emotion term such as the Ilongot liget as angermay in fact distortthe truth about Ilongot social reali-ties (see Rosaldo 1980). How does our different ap-proach make a differencehere?Theoristshave urgeda varietyof responses to thisproblem.AnnaWierzbicka 1986) defends a version ofthe position we have calledrealism,urging he develop-ment of a "language-independent emantic metalan-guage" n which universalemotionterms can be identi-fied. That s, she suggests that there are in all likelihoodlexical universalsin terms of which the emotion labelsof manylanguagescan be described.

If the English exicon includesa subset thathas isomorphicsubsets in the lexicons of all otherhuman anguages,thenwe can use this subset as a language-independentemanticmetalanguageXuitablefor a psychological and philosophi-cal study of humanemotions, as well as for cross-culturalcomparisonsof emotions. [1986:585]Wierzbicka's point is that such a metalanguagewould not be contaminatedby the ethnocentric biasentailed in any one language'slexicon and would thus"providea much betterfoundationfor a bias-freestudyof cultures thanthose [terms]that are restrictedto onelanguage" 1993:209).We can only applaudWierzbicka'sattentionto thefacts of humansimilarity.But hertypically realist hopefor a metalanguagerendered culturallyneutralby whatit correspondsto is a chimera.She arguesthat culturalanalysis can escape its rootedness-in a particularsitu-ation if it is conducted using terms that correspondtoconcepts thatare universalor nearlyso. This is a realistargument, for these concepts are something beyondlanguagethatare said to anchorsome subset of linguis-tic activity by means of their characteristics. It is acorrespondencebetween languageand something out-side languagethat is said to validatecertainutterances.Like any realist argument, his one faces the diffi-culty of articulatingwhat it means to say that certainlinguistic elementscorrespondto certainnonlinguisticelements. Furthermore,one must ask why it should bethought to be the case that some utterances in somelanguagesarerendered"bias-free" y facts aboutotherlanguages.All terms in any languagehave a history,all


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REPRESENTATIONEALITYANDCULTURE JOHNR. BOWLIN NDPETERG. STROMBERG 131

terms bring with them rhetorical nuances, whether ornot those terms happen to correspondto widely lexical-ized ideas.Read as practical suggestions for the practice ofethnography,Wierzbicka's rogramhas much to recom-mend it. An attempt to reduce complexities such asemotion labels to semantic primitives that occur in alllanguages may well lead to thorough and accurate de-scriptions of unfamiliar motions. But the claim that theintentions of others can be transparently depictedthrough the use of such semantic primitives is yet an-other version of the realist illusion.A representativeantirealistposition is defended byCatherine Lutz. She warns that the attribution of theIfalukemotionsong (identified in English as "justifiableanger") may entail an inherent distortion of the emo-tional life of Ifaluk speakers. An unreflective applica-tion of the English emotion term anger to Ifaluk situ-ations involves "therisk of reducing the emotional livesof others to the common denominator or intersectionwith our ownX Lutz 1985:69).Lutzpoints out that the emotion terms of Westernacademic psychology are in fact directly tied to theterms of our peculiar Euroamerican ethnopsychologyand that therefore they can be regarded neither as thenatural language of human sentiment nor as the onlyfaithful medium for representing human emotion. Shetherefore cautions against the possibility of using theseterms "as a standard against which to judge the truthvalue of Oceanic psychologies." Rather,she continues,"what s of primaryconcern is the articulation of par-ticular psychologies with other aspects of culture andwith environments" 1985:69).9There is little to find fault with here. But nowconsider what she concludes from the well-known factsof ethnopsychological diversity and the ordinary diffi-culties one finds in the Uarticulation" f psychologiesthat are not one's own. Following what is for manyanthropologicalorthodoxy, the idea that experience islinguistically or culturallyconstituted, Lutz nsists that

ethnopsychological language and knowledge have funda-mental structuring ffects on psychological experience andprocess. Ethnopsychologies are not simply ideological ve-neers that must be lifted in order to discover actual"psychological events. [1985:70]

In this view, language constitutes what is.20Since peo-ple in different times and places employ fundamentallydifferent ethnopsychologies, they will have fundamen-tally different emotional responses to the world. It fol-lows that a truthfulaccount of an emotional experiencemust appeal to the concepts that constitute it. Conceptsimported from another ethnopsychology will distortunderstanding precisely because they transform one

kind of "psychologicalexperience and process" into anemotional experience of an altogether different sort.The view that we have been defending encouragesus to reject this conclusion. Indeed, if the argumentwehave borrowed from Davidson is correct, then it will beimpossible for us to understandhow the Ifalukuse songwithout assuming arge measures of agreement n beliefand sentiment between us.2l With this assumption inplace it will make little sense to say that the Ifalukhaveemotional experiences vastly different from our own.Nor will it make sense to fear that using our emotionterms in orderto make sense of theirs need reduce theiremotional experience to ours.Of course, this does not imply that there is a senti-ment in the modern West that is roughly equivalent tosong or a concept that makes translatingthe term un-problematic. Nor do we mean to imply that the beliefswe maintain and the language we employ have nothingto do with the shape of our psychological concepts orthe character of our psychological experience, for ofcourse they do. But the conclusion to draw from thisordinary observation is not that language stamps un-structured psychological experience (whatever thatmight be) into something that a competent speakercould recognize, but rather that belief and sentimentalways come jumbled together, each affecting the char-acter of the other. We inevitably think and talk aboutsentiment by appealing to concepts we employ to thinkand talk about other things (see Rosaldo 1980:20 f.)It follows that the difficulty we have making senseof sentiments felt by the inhabitants of different timesand places is not explained by the fact that their psycho-logical experience is constitutedby an ethnopsychologyradically different than our own. Rather,the difElcultycomes in determiningwhich beliefs-some of which wemay not share inform which sentiments, also poten-tially unfamiliar. ndeed, it is likely that we find it diffi-cult to graspsong precisely because the content of thatemotion presupposes beliefs that we do not share. Butthat said, because we very likely share other beliefswith the Ifaluk,our efforts to understand heir emotionshave a reasonable chance, given sufficient effort andcare, to succeed despite this difficulty.Thinking n these terms allows us to conclude thatthe deeply ingrained figure of anthropological speech'ilanguage onstitutes experience" comes down to this:the beliefs and concepts that we need in order to useforeign concepts competently are often not readily athand. Indeed, one is tempted to talk of "languagecon-stituting experience" when translation becomes diffi-cult in just this way.22As Richard Rorty points out, tosay that

some things are '4constitutedby language" s just a way ofsaying that two groups are not talking about the same


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things if they talk about them very differently if wildlydifferentbeliefs and desires are aroused in them by thesethings. [ 1991:103]The upshot of this is that if we are faced with a differ-ence of belief or sentiment so strong as to tempt us tospeak of radically different cultural systems that pro-vide fundamentally different experiences of self andworld, we might just as well construe the problem as amistranslation. We can preserve the assumption of ageneral agreement at the level of belief and sentimentby altering our sense of how our interlocutor uses vari-ous terms and revising our judgment about the charac-ter of his or her actions. The intent of this strategy issimply to get us working harder at trying to understandour interlocutor. Its consequence is to bring us closerto specifying just where our disagreements with him orher lie and how his or her repertoires of belief andsentiment differ from our own. In short, it is carefullydetailed ethnography that is needed to spell out thesedifferences, and this is in fact what many antireal-ists Lutz is a fine example provide.The irony here should be obvious. Lutz's elegantethnographic practice undermines her theoretical re-marks about ethnographic inquiry. For insofar as shesucceeds in spelling out the differences that divide an-gerfrom song with care andprecision (see, for example,Lutz 1988:156 ff.), then it is unlikely that something assignificant as different ethnopsychologies stand be-tween us and the Ifaluk. As Davidson points out, "Weimprove the clarity and bite of declaration of difference,whether of scheme or opinion, by enlarging the basis ofshared (translatable) language or of shared opinion"(1984a:197). And if difference can be clarified only asagreement in belief and language is specified, then thereis little to recommend talk of incommensurableschemes, domains, languages, and cultures.And yet that talk remains. Regarding different cul-tures as different epistemic domains or discursive sys-tems that construe experience in different ways is nowthoroughly entrenched throughout cultural anthropol-ogy (found, indeed among scientific realists as well). Ifgood ethnographic practice seems to undermine thisantirealist assumption, what sustains it?Perhaps it is sustained by the need to provide anti-colonial sentiments with theoretical backup, with war-rants that give the appearance of moral neutrality. An-ticolonial sentiments demand that we give carefulattention to the self-descriptions of the inhabitants ofother times and places. When this demand is ignored,the appeal to antirealist assumptions offers an easyreply. If epistemic domains are in fact multiple anddistinct, then genuine understanding can only be had bygiving priority, perhaps even autonomy, to the self-de-scriptions of our informants.

We endorse these anticolonial moral sentiments,but we caution against defendingthem in this way. Wedo so not because antirealismis false, but ratherbe-cause no theoretical account of language,culture,andexperience can free us from the hard moral labor ofdistinguishingbetter and worse ways of treating thepeople we study. Too often antirealists have encour-aged this confusion by policing their ranks with theinsistence that anticolonialmoralsentimentscannotbesecured apartfrom antirealist theory. This is a confu-sion best left behind.Conclusion

The view we have defended here makes little ad-vance upon MichelleRosaldo'sobservatiorl hatbecause no human world is utterly unlike the things weknow, the translation of particulars is at once a way ofprobinga distinctivethough not wholly unfamiliar orm oflife and an exercise in the comparative study of humansocieties. [1980:233]

The by-now-veneratedanthropologicaladage that cul-tural difference"goes all the way down" s an overstate-ment. If we add anythingthat is new to this, it is therecognition that culture is not a language, scheme, ordomain;it is not a symbol system through which weview the world.It is an abstractionborn of a particularproblem,that of communicationamong social groups.When his abstractionbegins to cast doubt on the verypossibilityof cross-cultural nquiry,aproject ofrethink-. . .lIlg 1S ln orcer.Notes

Acknowledgments.This article has benefited from com-ments made on earlier versions by Catherine Lutz,RichardMcDonough,Jeffrey Stout, Paul Roscoe, GeoffreyM. White,and one anonymousreviewer; he authorsremainresponsiblefor any errors.1. Throughouthis article,pronounssignifyingauthorsandreaderswill assume a primarilyWestern audience. We, theauthors, do not make this assumption because we wish toignore, exclude, or alienate readers with different perspec-tives. Rather, his assumption simplyreflects our sense of theprimaryaudience the paperis likely to address.2. Throughout his article we use the term beltef to desig-nate the received ideas to which a people subscribe" Need-ham 1972:2).That s, we are not using the term in the markedsense that RodneyNeedhamargues may not be an appropri-ate categoryfor cross-culturaluse.3. Thephrase is Ian Hacking's(1985:165).4. Ananonymous reviewerfor this journalpoints out thatsome may disagreewithour characterizationof whatis meantby true"; one often hears some version of true for you, butnot for me."Ideally,we would at this point be able to point toa study in the ethnographyof speaking that shows that this


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REPRESENTATIONEALITYANDCULTURE JOHNR. BOWLIN NDPETERG. STROMBERG 133

exegesis is not an accurateaccount of actual usage. Since thatproject is beyond the scope of this article, we will for nowsimply point out that the academic (for example) who boardsan airplane to travel to a conference where he or she willpropound a domain-relative onception of truth is testifyingthrough his or her behavior to a higher level of certainty inhis or her own thought. Moreto the point in this context, wehold that the everydaypractice of speaking and interpretingsentences commits us all to a firm sense of what is and whatis notThree references are vital to those who wish to pursue thismatter further. The first is Rorty's (1991) discussion of theusage of the word true. Second, readers who remain inter-ested in the multipletruths,multiple worlds thesis should seeGoodman 1978for a sophisticated defense. For a criticism ofthis thesis (one that we find compelling), see Swoyer 1982.5. For a discussion of henneneutical enrichment, see Tay-lor 1981:204-210.6. Davidson (1990:132)calls these occasion sentences.

7. And note, uncertaintyabout truth always comes pack-aged with uncertainty about meaning. This is the conse-quence of Davidson'sholism. Utterances are not first under-stood and then assessed for truth. Rather, udgments aboutwhat is being said andjudgments about its truth are madetogether, each affecting the character of the other. It followsthat if we cannot be certain about the truth status of anutterance, it is likely that we are equally uncertain about itsmeaning.8. Is global skepticismpossible here? Could t turn out thatall of us, both speakers and interpreters,are mistaken n whatwe consider true? Davidsonthinks he has provided the skep-tic good reasons to put aside his or her doubts, and we agree.Still, reasons are never so good that believing what they denybecomes impossible.Skepticism'sresilient career is evidenceof this. So is the interminable character of methodologicaldebate. For this reason Rorty (1991:135-139) insists thatDavidson's argumentshave not answered the skeptic, indeednothing could. The point in this context is rather that David-son has shown that skepticism will not be a real option foranthropologists in the field, at least not for those seriouslycommitted to resolving the puzzles presented by their inter-locutors. For them, skepticism is a decadence, an indulgence,an amusement that can be left for other minds with otherinterests.9. That is, interpretationproceeds only as we assume thatmost of the beliefs held by any rational speaker of any lan-guage are true.10. This is the point thatHacking (1985) develops.11. Especially here, but throughout as well, we are in-debted to Stout (1988).12. See Davidson 1990:137; Fine 1986:115-116, 120,131-132; and Rorty 1991:5-6,130.13. Thus note CliffordGeertz's (1986) attempt to developan i'anti-anti-relativistrtance.14. Fine 1986:149andRorty 1991:127-128.See also note 4above.15. According to Fine (1986:140-141), it is the desire forthis metaphysical comfort that above all motivates antireal-ists and stamps their position with its reactionary character.

16. The caveat is important. For of course it is a mistaketo assume that every true belief has explicit warrants.Somedo; some do not. Those that do not are normally beliefs wecannot imagine doubting, beliefs so certain that everypoten-tial justifying reason turns out to be less certain than thebelief itself. Of course, epistemic conditions might changeand I maywell come to doubt what I once considered indubi-table. In that event, good reasons will be needed in order tosave truth.17. Fine 1986;Rorty 1991:97,101; Stout 1988.18. See the careful and illuminatingdiscussion of this issueby White(1992).19. The rejection of generalizingdiscourse evident in thisstatement is typical of much antirealist writing;see, for ex-ample, the more extensive discussion in Abu-Lughod1993.This orientation of interest is perfectly understandableanddefensible,but once again we would caution against explain-ing it in epistemological terms.20. It is worth noting that the notion that languageconsti-tutes reality is simply an inversion of the notion of correspon-dence, the conviction that reality constitutes meaning n lan-guage. This points again to the reactionary character ofantirealistthought in contemporaryanthropology.21. As we note below, this is precisely what Lutz does inpractice.22. Contexts of various sorts grammatical, istorical,po-litical, and so on condition belief, not by determiningthought but by providing options for assent. Even Sapir-Whorfian indings such as those reported recently by Lucy(1992) can be interpreted n this way.

References CitedAbu-Lughod,Lila1993 WritingWomen'sWorlds:Bedouin Stories. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress.Asad, Talal1986 The Concept of CulturalTranslation n BritishSocialAnthropology. n WritingCulture:The Poetics and Poli-tics of Ethnography.James Cliffordand George E. Mar-cus, eds. Pp. 141-164. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress.Clifford,James, and George E. Marcus,eds.1986 WritingCulture:The Poetics and Politics of Ethnog-raphy.Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress.Davidson,Donald1984a On the VeryIdea of a ConceptualScheme. In Inquir-ies into Truth and Interpretation.Pp. 183-198. Oxford,England:Oxford University Press.1984b True to the Facts. In Inquiries nto TruthandInter-pretation. Pp. 37-54. Oxford,England:OxfordUniversityPress.1986 A Nice I)erangementof Epitaphs. n TruthandInter-pretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of DonaldDavidson. Ernest LePore, ed. Pp. 433-446. Oxford, En-gland:Basil Blackwell.1990 A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge. InReadingRorty:CriticalResponses to Philosophy and the


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Lutz, Catherine1985 Ethnopsychology Compared to What? ExplainingBehavior and Consciousness among the Ifaluk. In Per-son, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsy-chologies. Geoffrey M. Whiteand John Kirkpatrick, ds.Pp. 35-79. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress.1988 UnnaturalEmotions: EverydaySentiments on a Mi-cronesian Atoll and Their Challenge o Western Theory.Chicago:University of Chicago Press.Needham, Rodney1972 Belief, Language,and Experience. Chicago:Univer-sity of Chicago Press.Rabinow, Paul1986 Representations Are Social Facts. In WritingCul-ture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.JamesClifford and George E. Marcus, eds. Pp. 234-261.Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress.

Rorty, Richard1979 Philosophyand the Mirrorof Nature. Princeton, NJ:Princeton UniversityPress.1987 Hesse andDavidson on Metaphor.AristotelianSoci-ety Supplement61:283-296.1991 Objectivity,Relativism and Truth.Cambridge:Cam-bridge UniversityPress.Rosaldo, Michelle1980 Knowledgeand Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self andSocial Life. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press.Spiro, Melford1996 Postmodernist Anthropology, Subjectivity,and Sci-ence: A ModeinistCritique.ComparativeStudies in Soci-ety and History38:759-780.Stout, Jeffrey1988 Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals andTheir Discontents.Boston: Beacon Press.Swoyer, Ghris1982 True For. In Relativism, Cognitive and Moral.JackW. Meilandand Michael Krausz,eds. Pp. 84-108. NotreDame, IN: Universityof Notre Dame Press.Taylor, Charles1981 Understandingand Explanation in the Geisteswis-senschaften. In Wittgenstein:To Follow a Rule. StevenHoltzmanand ChristopherLeich, eds. Pp. 191-210.Lon-don: Routledge and Kegan Paul.White, GeoffreyM.1992 Ethnopsychology.In New Directions in Psychologi-cal Anthropology. Theodore Schwartz, Geoffrey M.White,and CatherineA. Lutz,eds. Pp. 21-46. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.Wierzbicka,Anna1986 Human Emotions: Universal or Culture-Specific?AmericanAnthropologist88:584-594.1993 A Conceptual Basis for CulturalPsychology.Ethos21:205-231.

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