3.7 Critiques
Critics have argued that the emphasis on cross-cultural differences ignores far greater similarities. They also point out that anthropologists, like other social scientists, have dismissed biological influences on behaviour too readily (Brown 1991, Pinker 1998). Brown (1991) has assembled a long list of non-trivial traits, such as age statuses, classification of behavioural propensities, mourning, and a tradition of men marrying younger women, which no society has ever been found to lack.
Despite the existence of many human universals, there is room for dispute over what is truly universal. It can be argued, for instance, that many features of the family that scholars in any particular culture tend to treat as universal are in fact culturally specific. One example is the centrality of marriage. Many Western sociological and economic theorists assume that, aside from the relationship between mothers and children, the central relationship within any family is the one between husbands and wives. But the emphasis on the relationship between spouses may only be a reflection of long-standing Northwest European preference for nuclear families (see Section 2.1). In many strongly male-centred kinship systems such as those in East or South Asia, a man is expected to give greater priority to the needs of his brothers than his wife, and to avoid developing feelings for his wife which might undermine his loyalty to his brothers (Wolf and Huang 1980). Even in the less male-centered system of contemporary Maori, many people have difficulty deciding whether to give greater priority to their spouse or to their blood relatives Metge (1995: 109).
Anthropological theorists sometimes appear to view people as responding passively to social and cultural forces. For instance Geertz (1973) and Sahlins (1974) were outspoken critics of the application of conventional rational actor models to non-Western societies. This apparent rejection of rational actor theory does not, however, mean that anthropologists treat people as cultural automatons. Anthropologists describe how people use practices such as gift giving or marriage strategically to pursue various ends. They also emphasise that people deliberately manipulate norms and traditions to serve their own purposes. Anthropological accounts recognise “agency”, or freedom of choice, as well as “structure,” or the constraints imposed by custom, politics, and material conditions. Even the rejection of rational actor theory often boils down to an uncontroversial assertion that people in different cultures have different preferences (Little 1991).
3.8 The family, policy and the state
The relationship between states and their citizens is a central preoccupation of contemporary anthropology. As noted in Section 3.2.6, anthropologists have studied the effect on families of public institutions such as schools. They have also studied attempts at deliberate social engineering, whether drastic (eg, such as China’s birth control campaigns) or more subtle (eg, Singapore’s use of education campaigns, legislation, and tax concessions to bolster the “traditional Asian family”). Most scholars agree that China’s birth control campaigns were crucial to the country’s rapid fertility decline, even if economic and social development eventually made the campaign’s task less difficult (Wolf 1986). Evidence on the efficacy of Singapore’s programmes is mixed (Graham, Teo, Yeoh and Levy 2002).
When studying government programs, anthropologists usually look for examples of “agency”, whereby local officials or ordinary people resist or reinterpret commands from above, so that the actual effects of the programme differ from the intended effects. In response to pressure from their fellow villagers, for instance, low-level birth control cadres in China failed to implement rules on minimum marriage ages, and dealt leniently with couples who already had a daughter but wished to have a son (Greenhalgh 1993). In Singapore, women appear to have been selective about which aspects of the “traditional” family they consider to be appropriate in the modern world (Graham et al 2002). In New Zealand, Maori initially ignored the 1955 Adoption Act, and carried on adopting children in the traditional way (Metge 1995: Part IV). Familiarity with these sorts of examples of unintended consequences and unimplemented programmes are a valuable counter to naïve beliefs that policymakers can reshape families at their discretion.
