Unit 1 Intro Mentalities

7/18/2019 Unit 1 Intro Mentalities

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M.A. British Studies (CCBCG)

Assistant Professor Luminiţa-Elena TURCU

UNIT 1

Introduction

Aims, Terminology, Course Strategy

Contents:

I. Defining Terms: Pros and Cons:mentality/mentalities, thought

processes, mental actegories, ideas, identity/identities, beliefs, attitudes,

ideologies or world-views etc.

II. Course Aims and Strategy

II. Aims

The general problem that this course addresses concerns the

validity and usefulness of the notion ofmentalities. This has often

been used to characterize what is held to be distinctive about the

thought processes orsets of beliefs of groups or of whole societies, in

general or at particular times, and again, in describing thechanges

ortransformations that such processes or sets of beliefs are

considered to have undergone.

Why is it that individuals from different cultures often find it difficult to

communicate in spite of a shared linguistic means of communication?

III. Defining Terms

In an important discussion of the use of symbols in Renaissance art, Ernest

Gombrich wrote of the difficulty of the distinction between representation

and symbol posed to the "primitive mentality”, as he calls it. Others followed



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using the term mentality/mentalities in connection with traditions that seem

to be connected withthought processes ormental categories.

Not surprisingly, much of the talk of mentalities has been vague and

much has been diffuse. This has often been brought as a criticism of those

who have used the idea, though the imprecision or vagueness of the term

was one of its attractions in that it allowed the historians to study the

residues of historical analysis,le je ne sais quoi de l̓histoire. However, three

general features of the mentalities approach have been picked out by Peter

Burke in a survey article published in 1986, "Strengths and Weaknesses of

the History of Mentalities”(in History of European Ideas, vol. 7, no. 5, 1986,

pp. 439 – 451). These are:

1.the focus on ideas or beliefs of collectivities rather that on those of

the individuals;

2.the inclusion, as important data, of unconscious as well as conscious

assumptions;

3.the focus on the structure of beliefs and their interrelations, as

opposed to individual beliefs taken in isolation.

It is a common ground to most of those who have used the term that more

than just individual beliefs or individual̓s beliefs are in question, and

sometimes even more than whole networks of beliefs, attitudes, ideologies or

world-views – when a mentality is equated with a whole cast of mind deemed

to influence, permeate or determine more or less in its entirety the mental

activity of those who share it.

In what circumstances, if any, is it helpful or at least legitimate to

invoke the notion of adistinct mentality?

The French sociologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl secured a wide difussion

for the notion of mentalities, in particular in connection wioth with

his ill-starred hypothesis of "prelogical mentality”. This was supposed to be a

feature of much primitive thought and one that helped establish a contrast



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between it and thelogical orscientific mentality to be found in advanced

civilisations. Lévy-Bruhl came to renounce that hypothesis, but continued to

talk aboutdifferences in mentality/ies and to wrestle with the problem of

defining what he (and not only he) calls primitive mentality. He also

maintained that the structure of all human minds is fundamentally

identical. Secondly, he conceded that traces ofmystical mentality can be

found in societies other than primitive ones. Although his ideas met with a

good deal of criticism, they have proved highly influential. The idea of

distinct mentality has continued to be widely used, primarily, but not

exclusively, in France, by historians, philosophers, sociologists, etc. in a

variety of contexts. Among the historians ofthe Annales School, for instance,

from Marc Bloch onwards, the study of mentalities has often been contrasted

with traditionalhistory of ideas or again with any history stemming from a

concentration on great men and great texts.

Social anthropologists and philosophers have debated upon the

usefulness of the notion of mentalities in realtion to the

commensurability of belief systems and the understanding of apparently

irrational beliefs and behaviour. While an anthropologist such as Claude

Lévi-Strauss has made little explicit use of the concept of mentalities as

such, his discussion of certain fundamental characteristics of l̓ésprit

humain and his accounts of the relations between concrete and abstract

science pick up points from debates initiated by Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl.

SURROGATE TERMINOLOGY:

PARADIGM: has often been used as a synonym for mentalities but it refers

to something individuals use to make sense of their experience without

having evolution in view.

EPISTEME: introduced by Foucault to stress upon the system of knowledge

and not on change, again. Yet, Foucault introduced the useful notion of



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mental grids (grilles) – asort of microparadigms or schemata used by groups

to assimilate knowledge and explain experience;

STEREOPTYPES & METAPHORS: describing structures and patterns of

thought. For instance, the witch, the body, the machine, etc.

Can you give examples of what Lévy-Bruhl names mystical mentality

in connection with our own society?

II. Defining Terms: Cons

Many thinkers consider the term mentality/ies to be a term that says either

too much or nothing at all. The major difficulties that confront us in the task

of evaluating the validity of the notion of mentalities are:

• Much of the debate has in the past been at cross purposes because

insufficient attention has been paid to the question of precisely what is to

count as adifference, or achange, in mentalities.

• Conversely, what is to count as ashared mentality to a group. Let alone to

a whole society? Collectivities do not think, only individuals do. It is

obvious that we cannot concede that any group, any society consists of

individuals with entirely uniform mental characteristics.

• We should be clear that, in general, to appeal to a distinct mentality is

merely to redescribe the phenomena that are puzzling or in need of

explanation. The question that arises is how the mentality thus invoked

can itself be accounted for. Those following Piaget characterise the

differences in question in terms of stages of cognitive development,

deemed to follow an orderly sequence throughout human societies.

Piaget̓s research suggested that, at least for those Western children who

were his main subjects, the acquisition of certain concepts to do with

space, time, number and causation followed a well-defined sequence.



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• In drawing comparisons and contrasts between systems of belief in

general, it is essential to keep the terms of the comparison constant. There

are evident objections, for instance, to comparing one society̓s religion

with another̓s technology or science. Robin Horton̓s influential studies

comparing and contrasting African traditional religion and western science

(1967, 1982) point out that there is a ground of similarity between the two

as they both aim at explanation, prediction and control, and both, for that

end, provide a theoretical framework that invokes hidden entities.

Is there such a thing as acommunist mentality? Why do you think

many Romanian people refer back to that period of time and to that

regime when they describe themselves?

III. Course Strategy

The startegy of our investigation that follow is to take a set of problem areas

which may seem most amenable to the hypothesis of mentalities. These

include instances of extreme divergences or dissonance in discourse, beliefs or

world-views, which it is evidently tempting to refer to as differences in

mentalities. For that, we have to distinguish between:

• categories used by those who make the statements or hold the beliefs in

question and those we may use to describe them;

• actors andobservers.

V.Conclusions

As already mentioned, the history of menatlities differs from other

approaches tointellectual history, such as the Americanhistory of ideas, the

traditional GermanGeistesgeschichte, while resembling most certain styles of

social anthropology. It might indeed termed historical anthropology of ideas

as it includes philosophical, psychological, economic, aesthetic etc. Points of

view and concepts.



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Mentalities are connected with:

a stress oncollective attitudes rather than individual ones;

an emphasis onunspoken and unconscious assumptions, on

perceptions, on the workings of practical reason oreveryday

thought as well as conscious thoughts orelaborated theories;

a concern with thestructure of beliefs as well as their content,

withcategories,metaphors andsymbols, withhow people think

as well aswhat they think.

Therefore, what are mentalities?

Unit 1 Intro Mentalities

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Transcript of Unit 1 Intro Mentalities