Sad tropics

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Publisher's cover for the French edition ( Terre humaine )

Sad tropics is the German title of a travel report by the French ethnologist and sociologist Claude Levi-Strauss about his travels into the interior of Brazil between 1935 and 1938. The book was published in French in 1955 under the title Tristes Tropiques and is considered a programmatic publication of structuralism .

History of origin

In the years 1935–1938 Lévi-Strauss was sent to the newly founded university in São Paulo as a visiting professor of sociology as part of a French cultural mission. His first wife Dina Dreyfus taught there , with whom he undertook extensive ethnographic research trips to indigenous peoples in the Mato Grosso and the Amazon region between 1935 and 1939 . Constantin von Barloewen interprets the departure to Brazil as an open rebellion against the famous sociologist Émile Durkheim , whose historical empiricism Lévi-Strauss was too theoretical. He accepted the call "to escape philosophy". More than 15 years after these experiences, in 1955, Lévi-Strauss found time for his travel report, which he put together in just four months. He had separated from his wife at the time, Dina Dreyfus, who accompanied him on his travels through Brazil and thus played a major role in the work. He mentions her only once in this book.

content

structure

The first half of the book describes the reason and motivation for the travels and ethnographic studies, then the journey to South America and first impressions of the country. The second half describes the search for Indian tribes of the Brazilian Mato Grosso and contains an analysis of their living conditions, culture and social structure. The focus is on the peoples of the Caduveo (or Kadiweu ), the Bororo , the Nambikwara and the Tupi-Kawahib . Finally, he takes a critical look at the role of the ethnologist and the view of the civilized world on primitive peoples and religion.

The search for the origin

The central theme for Lévi-Strauss was the confrontation with the foreign, exemplarily with peoples who had never encountered the civilization we know. The confrontation with civilization led to the demise of the idiosyncrasies of these cultures. Lévi-Strauss tried to research the reasons for this and at the same time, in self-reflection, to determine his motives for the search for the original, which ultimately failed.

“As for me, I had gone to the end of the world in search of what Rousseau calls 'the barely noticeable advances in the beginnings'. Behind the veil of the all too wise laws of the Caduveo and the Bororo I had continued my search [...] ... [then] I believed that I had discovered this condition in a dying society [...] But it was it that eluded me. I was looking for a society reduced to its simplest expression. That of the Nambikwara was so simple that I only found the human in it. "

- Sad Tropics, p. 314

The development of cities and landscapes as a field of research

Lévi-Strauss describes the development dynamics of the urban periphery as it pushes the pioneering zone from the big cities further and further into the interior of Brazil. Thus there is still an embryonic state at the outer edge, a settlement in the process of being formed, while at the same time the older forms are in constant decline until they become "fossil cities" (p. 103) when the soil is depleted, the ore deposits are exhausted and the environment is devastated. The villages would arise along the roads and would go under with them. For example, the railway line “ruined” the towns on the rivers (p. 106). The names of the cities are often arbitrarily derived from individual persons or fashions and also change frequently (p. 105f.). Lévi-Strauss sees the analysis of changes in cities and landscapes as an expanded field of research for ethnography: “Even more appealing than following the remnants of Mediterranean traditions, it was to trace the strange forms in the interior of the country that a society that was developing was promoting . The topic was the same, because it was always about the past and the present, but in contrast to traditional ethnographic research, which seeks to explain this through the former, here it was the flowing present that seemed to reconstruct ancient stages of European development. As in the time of the Merovingians , one could see how a communal and urban life awoke in the midst of latifundia . "(P. 102)

The growth of the cities

In the 1930s, the settlement policy for Eastern and Central European immigrants in Paraná , a Brazilian state south of São Paulo , created many new, rapidly growing cities along a railway line. Lévi-Strauss believes that he can foresee the development of poverty and wealth in them, because the space in which the city develops has “its own values”. The city is always developing from east to west. The eastern parts fall into poverty over time. This is due to the fact that in the city, like in a microscope, the unconscious behaviors appear collectively enlarged. “Although it represents the most complex and refined form of civilization, [...] unconscious behaviors accumulate in the melting pot of the city, each of which is negligible, but can have a great effect due to the large number of individuals who display them. “(P. 113) The city develops collectively unconsciously and thus resembles art, which, however, is individually unconscious. “So it is not just in a metaphorical sense that one - […] - can compare the city to a symphony or a poem; these things are of the same nature. Perhaps even more precious, the city lies on the border between nature and artificiality. [...] It is both a natural object and a cultural subject; Individual and group; Experience and dream: the very human. "(P. 114)

Crowds in Asia

In the chapters on crowds and markets , the comparison between the American and Asian continents in terms of social relations is the focus, "the radical contrast between the deserted tropics and the overpopulated tropics." (135) For Lévi-Strauss, the high population density changes of the Asian continent the social life completely. While on the American continent "the relationships between people", compared with Europe, "do not take on new forms" (126), in Asia "daily life appears as a permanent rejection of the concept of human relationships" (126), "All initial situations that define the relationships between people are falsified, the rules of the social game corrupted" (127).

In Asia, for example, it is customary to make promises of everything that cannot be kept, and thus "you are forced to deny the other person from the outset that he is human, which is based on honesty, contractual loyalty and the ability to enter into obligations" (126 ). Begging is also a widespread evil that falsifies relationships between people. The misery is not perceived as a political problem, for example as a class antagonism, but as an individual fate. "The acceptance of a given situation is [...] total." (126) "The distance between extreme luxury and extreme misery goes beyond human dimensions." (128). Lévi-Strauss also considers the servants' subservience to Europeans to be degrading. "They constantly sweep around you and wait for an order." (129) "They do not want [...] to be the same." (127)

The "problem of large numbers [of people]" (141) restricted the freedom of the individual. Freedom is "the result of an objective relationship between the individual and the space he occupies, between the consumer and the resources he has at his disposal." (140) Freedom is difficult to achieve in a confined space. The caste system in India sees Lévi-Strauss as a failed attempt to live together in a large crowd in such a way that “everyone recognizes himself as human but as different” (141). The confinement of people in the smallest of spaces carries the risk of developing ideologies that exclude groups of people from being human, so that more space is created for those who remain until population growth makes it necessary to exclude other groups. Lévi-Strauss sees this development in Europe as well, "because that systematic devaluation of people by people is spreading ever further [...] (142)." "What frightens me in Asia is the image of our own, anticipated future . In American Indian America I love the fleeting reflection of an age in which man was at the height of his universe and in which there was an adequate relationship between the exercise of freedom and its signs. "(142)

The Caduveo

see also Kadiweu

Kadiweu woman 1892

Fifth part of the book with the following sub-chapters (chapter number in Roman numerals):

  • XVII Paraná
  • XVIII Pantanal
  • XIX Nallike
  • XX A native society and its style

The Caduveo are an indigenous people who now live in four villages in a reserve between the Serra da Bodoquena and the Rio Aquidabán . Lévi-Strauss is interested in the social structure and the art of the tribe, and in particular the relationship between the two. At the head of society are the nobles, who are either by birth or by merit. Then come the warriors. The lower caste is made up of the slaves who usually belong to other peoples (p. 169). “Society has shown itself to be averse to all feelings which they consider natural; so they felt a deep loathing for fathering children. Abortion and infanticide were the order of the day… ”(ibid.). Instead, children were robbed by other tribes. The same aversion to the natural can also be seen in the fact that the Caduveo always painted themselves on special occasions. Only animals didn't paint themselves. "In face painting, as in abortion and infanticide, the Mbaya expressed their disgust for nature." (P. 179) The art of Caduveo is "characterized by a dualism: that between men and women, with a sculptor, the other are painters; the first maintain a representational and naturalistic style, despite all stylizations, while the second devote themselves to abstract art There are dynamics of production that "[overlap] duality on all levels" (ibid., P. 183). This creates very complex patterns of symmetry on a small scale and asymmetries in the overall composition.

It is typical of Lévi-Strauss that he also tries to create a relationship between the social structure and the sign systems (the codes) that relate to social reality. The style in art is a confrontation with the peculiar social structure of the people: He believes that “the graphic art of the Caduveo women, their mysterious power of seduction and their at first sight unfounded complexity are interpreted and explained as the fantasy of a society [must], who searches with unsatisfied passion for the means to symbolically represent the institutions that she could have had if her interests and her superstitions had not prevented her. […] Hieroglyphs that describe an inaccessible golden age , which, in the absence of a code, they praise in their jewelry and whose secrets they reveal at the same time as their nudity. "(P. 188f.)

The Bororo

Sixth part of the book with the following sub-chapters:

  • XXI gold and diamonds
  • XXII Good savages
  • XXIII The living and the dead

When Lévi-Strauss met the Bororo culture, it was still largely intact except for the influence of the missionaries of the Salesians . On the one hand one owes this order the best ethnological sources about the tribe, on the other hand the missionaries tried to "systematically exterminate the native culture" (p. 208). Nevertheless, there is still so much of it that it "upsets the researcher" (p. 206).

Bororo

Religious chants

Native nights are reserved for religious life. There is singing all night, accompanied by the rattling of pumpkins. The chants serve to soothe the spirit of the animals that were hunted so that they can be eaten.

Jewellery

The natives attach great importance to jewelry. "The women have real jewelers ..." (p. 218). The men wear elaborate feather crowns on their heads for ritual purposes, which can be up to two meters high.

Plant of the settlement

Settlement structure and clans

Bororo men's headdress

The author explores the village of Kejara the Bororos. The settlement is circular and resembles a wagon wheel. 26 exactly identical huts are at the same distance in the circle periphery. In the middle is the much larger men's house, in which the bachelors sleep and which is forbidden for women. During the day it is the meeting place for the men. The circle periphery with the family houses is divided into two halves. This structure determines the ownership structure and the rules of marriage. The women own the huts on the periphery , the children are assigned to the district to which the mothers belong. The men always have to marry women from the other half of the village and then move into their wives' huts. The halves are also important for social life and religious rituals. Members of both halves are always involved in cultic acts. If someone helps a member of one half, this must be compensated by an easement from someone from the other part of the tribe. In addition, each resident belongs to a specific clan with subgroups. There are “rich” and “poor” clans. This distinction is partly based on different successes in hunting or professional specialization. On the other hand, every clan has a treasure trove of myths , traditions, dances and privileges that belong only to them. All items made by the tribe bear the coat of arms of the clan to which they belong. This system was dissolved by the relocation of the missionaries to villages of a different structure and the decline in the size of the tribes, and the natives "quickly lose [beyond] the sense of tradition" (p. 212).

The men's house

The men's house is of central importance in the life of the village. It is the center of social and religious life and religious activities (for example when turning wooden sticks ). The author is amazed by the “impartiality in the face of the supernatural” (p. 211), which enables the natives to switch between religious and everyday acts without any transition.

The living and the dead

“Few peoples are as deeply religious as the Bororo, only a few have such a sophisticated metaphysical system” (p. 120f.). The religious is the domain of men. Therefore ritual dances and ceremonies are prepared in the men's house or practiced in the absence of the women. Women take on more roles of spectators, while men incarnate the living, the dead and gods in the ritual. In these religious exercises, connections between the physical and social world and between the living and the dead are established or symbolized. Two special characters within the village community are responsible for the relationships: on the one hand, the priest as "Lord of the Soul's Path". He is in connection with the souls of the dead world, which appear to him in the dream. He is a healer to the living. On the other hand there is the magician, the bari , who is an incarnation of a (mostly evil) spirit. He receives a share of the hunted prey and in return protects the spirit. The magicians mediate between the physical and social world. If a member of the community dies, nature is indebted to the tribe and must compensate for this by allowing the tribe to kill an animal. According to Lévi-Strauss, this complicated metaphysical system only serves to “hide, gloss over and justify the real relationships that exist between the living and the dead at the level of religious thought” (p. 137).

The Nambikwara

Seventh part of the book with the following sub-chapters:

  • XXIV The lost world
  • XXV In the bush
  • XXVI On the telegraph line
  • XXVII family life
  • XXVIII writing hours
  • XXIX men, women, chiefs

Due to the nomadic way of life, the couple forms the foundation of the social structure of the Nambikwara. Couples join hordes , which they leave when they are in decline. The men of the Nambikwara are hunters and gardeners, the women gatherers. During the day the men go hunting (they often use the plant poison curare ) and the women go with the children through the bush and collect all the food they can find with the digging stick. The collecting activity of women is seen as inferior to hunting.

The life of the Nambikwara is shaped by the contrast between rainy and dry seasons. In the rainy season they are sedentary and live mainly from agriculture. During this period there is usually plenty of food and the man dominates the food supply. During the seven-month dry season, families adopt a nomadic way of life and often struggle to survive. The family then lives mainly from the woman's collecting activity. During the long marches, the woman carries all the family's belongings in a box with a headband, while the man often only travels with a bow and arrow.

Although the Nambikwara are monogamous in principle , the chief has the privilege of having multiple wives (see limited polygyny ). As with the other families, his eldest wife is responsible for organizing the household and bringing up the children. The other women are mostly younger, more like the chief's playmates and are relieved of normal household chores. They are, so to speak, the compensation for the leadership of the tribe by the chief. Due to the small size of the horde, the problem arises for other adolescent young men that women of marriageable age are becoming scarce. It is therefore common for young men to enter into homosexual relationships with their cross cousins , which are called love lies (ibid., P. 310).

There is also an important difference between men and women in the Nambikwara religious system:

"After death, the souls of men are embodied in jaguars , while those of women and children are carried into the atmosphere, where they dissolve forever."

- Lévi-Strauss : Sad tropics

The Tupi-Kawahib

Eighth part of the book with the following sub-chapters:

  • XXX in the dugout
  • XXXI Robinson
  • XXXII In the forest
  • XXXIII The village of crickets
  • XXXIV The farce of Japim
  • XXXV Amazonia
  • XXXVI Seringal

The first reports about the tribe are from Cândido Rondon . Later Curt Unckel (also called Nimuendajú after the native name) researched the people and is mentioned with respect by Lévi-Strauss (p. 330). Lévi-Strauss was able to identify around 20 clans that belong to this tribe. He visited the village of the crickets , which was on the Igarapé do Leitão, a right tributary of the Rio Machado . In 1938 it was still inhabited by six women, seven men and three little girls who had no contact with the outside world for at least thirteen years. By the time the ethnologist arrived, the chief had decided to dissolve the village and join civilization.

Settlement structure

The Tupi-Kawahib village consisted of four square huts that lay in an artificial clearing and were arranged parallel to a stream. Only two of the houses were still occupied. The natives slept in hammocks . The buildings were in the shape of a mushroom and the double-sided roofs were covered with palm fronds. The walls were made of palm trunks framed in the ground. There were loopholes in between . The outer walls were covered with drawings in red and black depicting various animals. According to Lévi-Strauss, these house shapes were a tradition for the tribe, but completely different from those of the neighboring tribes.

Economic basis

The natives plant cassava , corn, potatoes, peppers, yams and a species of forest grass as grain. On the hunt, they kill deer and tapirs , with whose bones they also adorn themselves. The drink they serve is cahouin , a chicha brew made from corn that is enriched with the young girls' spit to accelerate fermentation .

dress

The women wore loincloths and tightly laced ribbons around wrists and ankles, as well as necklaces made of tapir teeth and deer bones. The men's clothing consisted only of a conical penis pouch .

Family structures

The chief has a kind of monopoly over women. Almost all women who are not related to him are married to him. The chief's wife has the privilege of accompanying him on his hikes. Due to the polygamous prerogative of the chief, however, there is a shortage of women in the tribe, which is compensated by the fact that he "lends women to his companions and foreigners" (p. 351). There is also the levirate , in which a brother inherits his brother's wife when he dies. There is also fraternal polyandry , in which related men share a woman.

Structuralism as the ethnologist's method

The book sums up the structuralist way of thinking on which Lévi-Strauss bases his ethnological studies and on which structural anthropology is based: “The totality of the customs of a people is always characterized by a style; they form systems. I am convinced that the number of systems is limited and that human societies [...] never create absolutely new things, but limit themselves to selecting certain combinations from an ideal repertoire. […] If one were to create an inventory of all customs […], one would finally get a kind of periodic table similar to that of the chemical elements, in which all real and also possible customs would be grouped into families, so that one only had to find out needed which of them the individual societies actually accepted. "(p. 168f.)

Criticism of religion

Thematically anchored in the ninth part of the book ( The Return ) with the following sub-chapters:

  • XXXIX Taxila
  • XL visit to Kyong (final chapter, Kyong is in today's Myanmar )

“Humans have made three great attempts to free themselves from the pursuit of the dead, the wickedness of the afterlife, and the fears of magic . About half a millennium apart, they conceived Buddhism , Christianity and Islam one after the other ; and it is noticeable that each of these stages in relation to the previous one does not represent progress, but a step backwards. ”(p. 405) Claude Lévi-Strauss comes to the conclusion that Islam, as the last religion to emerge,“ is the most developed form of religious thought ”(p. 404f.), but it is also“ the most disturbing of all three ”(p. 405). Islam “seems to be a method of creating insurmountable conflicts in the mind of the believer, from which they can only be saved by offering them solutions of very great (but too great) simplicity. With one hand you push it to the edge of the abyss, with the other you hold it back ”(p. 398f.) For example, the requirement to veil and the strict separation of men and women or the requirement not to eat with unclean hands are among the solutions to conflicts that religion creates. Christianity could represent a reconciliation between the segregation -related basic attitude of Islam and the merging tendencies of Buddhism. However, Christianity comes too early for this historically. Lévi-Strauss' criticism of religion is determined by his profound skepticism about the meaning of religious ideas. "Just as religious ideas and superstition vanish when one looks at the real relationships between people, so morality gives way to history, flowing forms give way to structures, and creation to nothing" (p. 410). For him, the goal of development is to overcome the contradiction between being and knowledge, an attitude that he already sees realized in Buddhism and that is lost again in later religions.

Appreciation

After its publication, the book met with a largely positive response. Georges Bataille , Michel Leiris and Maurice Blanchot all wrote positive reviews . The literary critic Susan Sontag calls the book a masterpiece and counts it among the most important books of the 20th century. In the ZEIT library of 100 books by ZEIT it is one of the 100 most important books of all time, and in the newspaper Le Monde it is one of the 100 books of the 20th century . The book has a great influence on the work of Georges Devereux . Devereux counts Sad Tropics among the three works, "the [among] the only major attempts I know of to evaluate the impact of his data and his scientific work on the scientist himself".

expenditure

literature

Book Reviews Sad Tropics:

Obituaries:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the wilds of civilization , accessed April 14, 2014.
  2. ↑ p. 183
  3. ^ Georges Bataille : Un livre humain, un grand livre. In: Critique. No. 105, February 1956.
  4. ^ Susan Sontag : A Hero of our Time. In: The New York Review of Books . November 28, 1963. Retrieved July 27, 2017.
  5. ↑ Georges Devereux : Anxiety and Method in the Behavioral Sciences. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1976, pp. 20/21.