Lesson 4
Myth as Society
Have you ever wondered how culture is created and spread? Or why
there is so much overlap between what individual members of a
society believe?
To answer this, let's turn to another theory of myth that is in many
ways related to Levi-Strauss' structuralism (which we will be
introduced to this week) or Bruce Lincoln's ideas of 'myth as ideology'
but predates them both: the idea that the telling of myth serves a clear
function within a society. For shorthand, we will call this simply 'myth
as society' although we could also call it 'functionalism' for reasons
that we will see.
Let us start by reiterating the problem -- I have already suggested for
you that one possible issue with Burkert's view of myth is that he
focuses only on the end result -- he assumes that myth looks back to a
process that is already completed. That Burkert's theory is that a myth
reflects or has reference to something of importance to a society. So,
for him myth is just a coded way of expressing the existing values of a
society. He is not otherwise interested in how those values come to be
or the role that myth might have in maintaining or creating those
values. Similarly, for Levi-Strauss, myth is communication -- and, as
such, just a way of expressing some crucial, universal, elements of
human nature. For both, myth communicates something critical (and
thus can be studied in that way) but myth itself does not
affect anything -- it is not an active force.
Counter to that is the functional school of myth (a category which
Bruce Lincoln partially falls into) which says that rather than study just
what myths say, we should ask what myths do --and indeed, why they
are told at all. For turn-of-the-century anthropologists studying non-
industrial cultures, it became clear that societies often employ customs
and traditions which seem counterproductive to an outside observer,
often wasting a great deal of resources which could be dedicated to
survival. The primary case of this is of course, the act of religious
sacrifice (that is, burning or otherwise destroying food by dedicating it
to the gods) -- why, these anthropologists asked, would a society
evolve to spend food in this way? Surely a society which didn't do
these things would have had a competitive advantage against those
that did? And yet, they found that almost every early culture practiced
some form of sacrifice in this way...
, Eventually, they theorized a kind of ideological 'survival of the fittest'
to parallel Darwin's biological concept -- arguing that cultural practices
must exist in competition with all other potential options, and that any
practice which survives must have demonstrated a reason for that
survival (a sort of fitness), otherwise it would have been surpassed by
practices and ideals which did provide a benefit. From that
principle then, they came to the conclusion that
surviving practices must still serve a beneficial function which
justify the time and resources devoted to them, even if it was not
immediately clear what that function was (hence why the school is
sometimes called 'functionalist').
More often than not, these scholars concluded that this function had
something to do with enforcing group solidarity -- creating an 'in-group'
and an 'out-group' -- and that these cultural practices served to create
and propagate cultural identity at an individual level. Enter one of the
founding fathers of cultural anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-
1942), who extended this idea into the study of myth -- although note
that he thinks myths are something which only pre-industrial societies
employ (hence his dated and offensive use of the term 'primitive'
here).
“Myth is not the nature of fiction… Myth fulfills in primitive culture an
indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it
safeguards and enforces morality… Myth is thus a vital ingredient of
human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked, active
force.... Myth is a constant by-product of sociological status, which
demands precedent, and of moral rule, which requires sanction.”
(Myth in Primitive Psychology 1926. pp. 81-2)
Please note: Early anthropologists had a clear view of the 'evolution' of
culture, which argued that their own (Western) culture was the peak of
a set of developments out of earlier (they would say 'primitive')
cultures. This caused them to label and study other cultures as existing
on a spectrum that started with 'undeveloped' and ended with
'developed, industrial Western' culture. As a result, they were very
interested in studying cultures -- particularly remote tribal societies --
which had not developed industry because they thought that by
studying these cultures they could view earlier stages of their own
past. We should not share this idea and by citing Malinowski, I do not
mean to endorse this view -- and I should make it very clear that this
way of thinking was born out of a very backward and imperialistic view
of the superiority of the Western world -- and would be used to justify
some horrible actions (we will be discussing this in depth later)! Later
Myth as Society
Have you ever wondered how culture is created and spread? Or why
there is so much overlap between what individual members of a
society believe?
To answer this, let's turn to another theory of myth that is in many
ways related to Levi-Strauss' structuralism (which we will be
introduced to this week) or Bruce Lincoln's ideas of 'myth as ideology'
but predates them both: the idea that the telling of myth serves a clear
function within a society. For shorthand, we will call this simply 'myth
as society' although we could also call it 'functionalism' for reasons
that we will see.
Let us start by reiterating the problem -- I have already suggested for
you that one possible issue with Burkert's view of myth is that he
focuses only on the end result -- he assumes that myth looks back to a
process that is already completed. That Burkert's theory is that a myth
reflects or has reference to something of importance to a society. So,
for him myth is just a coded way of expressing the existing values of a
society. He is not otherwise interested in how those values come to be
or the role that myth might have in maintaining or creating those
values. Similarly, for Levi-Strauss, myth is communication -- and, as
such, just a way of expressing some crucial, universal, elements of
human nature. For both, myth communicates something critical (and
thus can be studied in that way) but myth itself does not
affect anything -- it is not an active force.
Counter to that is the functional school of myth (a category which
Bruce Lincoln partially falls into) which says that rather than study just
what myths say, we should ask what myths do --and indeed, why they
are told at all. For turn-of-the-century anthropologists studying non-
industrial cultures, it became clear that societies often employ customs
and traditions which seem counterproductive to an outside observer,
often wasting a great deal of resources which could be dedicated to
survival. The primary case of this is of course, the act of religious
sacrifice (that is, burning or otherwise destroying food by dedicating it
to the gods) -- why, these anthropologists asked, would a society
evolve to spend food in this way? Surely a society which didn't do
these things would have had a competitive advantage against those
that did? And yet, they found that almost every early culture practiced
some form of sacrifice in this way...
, Eventually, they theorized a kind of ideological 'survival of the fittest'
to parallel Darwin's biological concept -- arguing that cultural practices
must exist in competition with all other potential options, and that any
practice which survives must have demonstrated a reason for that
survival (a sort of fitness), otherwise it would have been surpassed by
practices and ideals which did provide a benefit. From that
principle then, they came to the conclusion that
surviving practices must still serve a beneficial function which
justify the time and resources devoted to them, even if it was not
immediately clear what that function was (hence why the school is
sometimes called 'functionalist').
More often than not, these scholars concluded that this function had
something to do with enforcing group solidarity -- creating an 'in-group'
and an 'out-group' -- and that these cultural practices served to create
and propagate cultural identity at an individual level. Enter one of the
founding fathers of cultural anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-
1942), who extended this idea into the study of myth -- although note
that he thinks myths are something which only pre-industrial societies
employ (hence his dated and offensive use of the term 'primitive'
here).
“Myth is not the nature of fiction… Myth fulfills in primitive culture an
indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it
safeguards and enforces morality… Myth is thus a vital ingredient of
human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked, active
force.... Myth is a constant by-product of sociological status, which
demands precedent, and of moral rule, which requires sanction.”
(Myth in Primitive Psychology 1926. pp. 81-2)
Please note: Early anthropologists had a clear view of the 'evolution' of
culture, which argued that their own (Western) culture was the peak of
a set of developments out of earlier (they would say 'primitive')
cultures. This caused them to label and study other cultures as existing
on a spectrum that started with 'undeveloped' and ended with
'developed, industrial Western' culture. As a result, they were very
interested in studying cultures -- particularly remote tribal societies --
which had not developed industry because they thought that by
studying these cultures they could view earlier stages of their own
past. We should not share this idea and by citing Malinowski, I do not
mean to endorse this view -- and I should make it very clear that this
way of thinking was born out of a very backward and imperialistic view
of the superiority of the Western world -- and would be used to justify
some horrible actions (we will be discussing this in depth later)! Later
