The Way the World is |
Preface |
1 Ethnographic and Theoretical Introduction |
• | The Ethnographic Focus |
• | Incomplete Sharing and Cultural "Explanations" |
• | "Molecular" Processes and the Enduring Myth of Complete Sharing |
• | Culture and "Culture" |
• | "Status": Culture's Action Arm |
• | Culture and Its Distribution |
Status: The Action Arm of Culture |
• | Identifiers |
• | Salience Understandings |
• | Specific and General Expectations |
General Expectations, Cultural Sharing, and the Effectiveness of Statuses |
• | "Tokens" and "Guides" |
• | "Cultural Models" and General Expectations |
• | Identifiers, General Expectations, and More on Models |
• | "Shame" and Its Agents |
• | "Role" as a Part of Status |
• | General Expectations and the Effects of Unshared Culture |
• | Cultural Distribution and Social Structure |
• | The Organization of Culture by Statuses |
2 Akher Zamani Mombasa Swahili History and Contemporary Society |
• | The Swahili in Contemporary Mombasa |
• | Contemporary Old Town and Mombasa |
Old Mombasa |
• | Beginning: 1000–1500 |
• | The Coming of the Two-Section Community: 1500–1836 |
• | The Busaidi and the British: 1837–1964 |
3 The Brotherhood of Coconuts Unity, Conflict, and Narrowing Loyalties |
• | Introduction |
• | Asserting Arab Ethnicity and Its Effect on the Community |
New Community Divisions |
• | "Natives" and "Nonnatives" |
• | Section Competitions |
• | Unity Through Competition and Its End |
• | National Politics and Its Indirect, Profound Influence |
• | Current State of the Community and the Section System |
• | "Ethnic" Status and the Destruction of the Two-Section System |
• | Marriage and Community in Contemporary Mombasa |
• | "Clans" and Other Designations Wrongly or Rarely Used |
• | Residence |
• | Outside Contacts and Community Importance |
• | Diminished Prosperity |
• | Less Expensive Life-Crises Rituals |
4 He Who Eats with You Kinship, Family, and Neighborhood |
• | Kin, Household, and Nuclear Family |
Swahili Kinship |
• | Parents and Children |
• | Mother's Siblings and Father's Siblings |
• | Siblings and Cousins |
• | Matrilateral Association and Affection |
• | Generational Kin Term Uses |
• | Kin and Expectations |
• | The Importance of General Expectations |
Mutual Choice in Forming a Social "Pool" |
• | Neighbors |
• | Relations with Non-Swahili Neighbors |
• | "One Character," "Accustomedness," and "Love": The Emotional States Understood as Usual in Close Relationships |
• | Inclusive Neighborhoods: Old Town Sections |
• | Residence Choice and Household Location |
"Adoption" |
• | The Lives of Adopted Children and of "Natural" Children |
Marriage for Women, Jobs for Men |
• | Arranged First Marriages |
• | Selecting the Families of Those Who are to Marry |
• | Rejecting or Not Extending Proposals |
• | The Basis for Successful Marriages |
• | Bride Wealth |
• | Divorce |
Nuclear Family Life |
• | Family Activity |
• | The Division of Activity by Gender in the Family and Generally |
• | Employment |
• | The Central Place of the Nuclear Family |
5 Understanding is Like Hair Limited Cultural Sharing and the Inappropriateness of "All by All" and "Some by Some" Models for Swahili Culture |
• | Introduction |
• | "Status" |
• | Measuring Cultural Sharing |
• | The Limits in the Amount of Family Culture Shared by Family Members and Community Members from Different Families |
• | Are the Swahili a "Homogeneous Society"? |
• | Extent of Sharing within the Family Versus Extent of Total Group Sharing |
• | Less Sharing Among Members of the Same Named Statuses than Among Fellow Family Members with Different Family Statuses |
• | "Family Member" as a Status |
• | Status Membership and the Sharing of Status Culture |
• | Relationships: Do Participants Share Their Culture More? |
• | Neither "All by All" Nor, without Modification, "Some by Some" |
• | Dealing with the Fact of Diversity |
6 Close One of Your Eyes Concealing Differences Between the Generations and the Uses of "Tokens" |
• | Introduction |
• | Differences Between Younger and Older Men and Women |
Differences Between Age Groupings, Uniformity within Them |
• | Attempting to Measure Generation Gap Differences |
• | The Survey Study of Generational Differences in Sharing Understandings Concerning the Generation Gap |
• | Apparent Differences Between Culture and Behavior |
• | "Phatic Communion," Interpersonal Relations, and Questionnaires |
• | "Tokens" and "Guides" |
• | Sharing, Nonsharing, and Social Life: Predictability |
7 Liking Only Those in Your Eye Relationship Terms, Statuses, and Cultural Models |
• | Status, Culture's Action Arm |
• | Role, a Subunit of Status |
• | Cultural Models, Language, and Statuses |
Four Kinds of Statuses |
• | Simplex and Multiplex Relationships and the Statuses Involved |
• | Two Functions of Statuses |
• | Statuses, Expectations, and Evaluations |
• | Who is a What? |
• | Expectations and Double Contingency |
"Relationship Terms" and Shared Understandings |
• | Investigating Terms Concerning Expectations and Relationships |
• | Honor and Deference: How Terms Encourage Conformity |
• | Unfavorable Terms and Understandings Mainly about the Young |
• | Expectations in Specific Relationships |
• | Effects of Relationship Terms through Contrast |
The Virtues of Reserving Special Treatment for Those in Special Relationships |
• | Liking Only Those in Your Eye |
• | Being Accustomed |
• | Broad Personal Traits, Broad Expectations, and Hierarchy |
• | Respect and Reciprocity |
• | Hierarchy as a General Understanding Supported by the Use of a Variety of Terms |
• | Terms and Conformity |
Some General Understandings of the World and Relationships |
• | Characterizations of Conflict Bringers |
• | Insults, Conflict, and Secrecy/Privacy |
• | Insults, Honor, and Expectations |
• | The Part of Relationship Terms in Cultural Dynamics: Cultural Models |
8 Tongues are Spears Shame and Differentiated Conformity |
Shame, Status, and Limited Sharing |
• | Double Status Relativity and, Also, Uniform Judgment |
• | "Shame" |
• | The Power of "Aibu" |
• | Secrecy and Shame |
• | Recognizing Aibu: Different Ideals and Different Agents |
• | Some Universal Bases for Aibu |
• | Aibu without Personal Belief in Having Erred |
• | Aibu and Significant Others: Arbiters and Sanctioners |
• | The Distribution of Culture |
• | Statuses as the Basis for Judgment |
• | Status Differences and Privacy |
• | Self-Reinforcing "Fear" |
• | Aibu as a Social and Psychological Process |
Cultural Change, Shame, and Cultural Distribution |
• | Arbiters and Cultural Change |
Shame, Behavior, and the Distribution of Culture |
• | Balancing Shame and Contrary Forces: A Little Case |
• | Shame as a Support for Cultural Diversity |
9 Leaning on the Cow's Fat Hump Medical Choices, Unshared Culture, and General Expectations |
• | Cultural Organization |
• | Limited Sharing of Vital Understandings and Organization |
• | A Cultural Pattern: An Intrinsic Organization |
Expert Understanding of Body Functioning and Illness |
• | Body Functioning and the Bodily Elements |
• | The Classification of Food and Drink in the Balance System |
Expert Understandings of the Causes of Illness |
• | Diagnosis and Treatment |
• | Morality, Illness, and Organization |
• | Balance as a Desideratum in Social Relations |
• | Balance in Understandings about the Body and about Social Relations |
• | Patterns, Nonsharing, and Cultural Organization |
• | Laymen's Understandings about Illness and Body Functioning |
• | Cultural Organization and Guidance: Choice without Understandings |
• | Illness and Treatment |
• | Medical Care and Advisers |
• | Advice in Multiplex Relations with General Expectations |
• | Advisers' Understandings and Experience |
• | Social Relationships and Plans of Action: Cultural But Extrinsically Organized |
General Expectations and Cultural Organizations: It isn't What You Know |
• | Why Advice is Followed |
• | Illness, Nonsharing and "Patterns" |
• | Conclusion and Summary |
10 A Wife is Clothes Family Politics, Cultural Organization, and Social Structure |
Power in Marriage |
• | Women's Social Relations and Prestige |
• | Gender Statuses and Salience Understandings |
• | Gender Statuses and Differences Between Them |
• | Comparing Men's and Women's Social Relations |
• | Wedding Ceremonies and the Gender Statuses |
• | Relations with Close Kin: Warmth for Women, Restrictions for Men |
• | The Spouse Relationship: Feelings and Funds |
• | Divorce, Death, and Gender Differences in the Significance of Marriage |
• | Husbands, Wives, Love, and Marriage |
• | The Real Power of the Husband/Father |
• | The Husband/Father's Real Need for Warmth and Emotional Support |
• | Women's Happiness and Wives' Power |
• | Understandings about Women, Social Structure, and Wives' Power |
• | Social Structure's Strictures: More on Unshared Culture |
11 The Dynamics of Swahili Culture A Status-Centered View |
• | Invoking "Shared Beliefs and Values"—and Why Not |
• | How Cultural Elements Affect Those Who Do Not Share Them: Statuses, Cultural Distribution, and Prediction |
• | Statuses: Bringing Culture to Bear on Everyday Concerns for Sharers and Nonsharers Alike |
• | Evaluation as the Foundation of Social Life, Status as the Foundation of Evaluation |
• | How Unshared Evaluative Understandings Serve to Affect Behavior |
• | Statuses as a Source of Morality When Understandings Differ |
• | Broader Consequences of Social Relationships |
• | "Delivery Systems" and Cultural Guidance for Life's Problems |
• | Limited Sharing within Statuses and the Sources of Statuses' Effectiveness: The Issues |
• | Conformity and Status Effectiveness: Universal Sharing and the Role of Tokens |
• | When Tokens are Not Guides But Have Manifest Results |
• | Divergent Understandings and Double Contingency |
• | The Necessity for "Common Standards" and the Question of Sharing |
• | Universal Sharing and the Importance of Relationships: "I Know You!" |
• | Relationship Terms and Cultural Models |
• | The Importance of Positive Assessments: A Universal Lesson and Ubiquitous Source of Cultural Conformity |
• | Cultural Conformity: Bases for Shame and Guilt |
• | Conformity to Communitywide and Status-Specific Understandings |
• | Statuses and Cultural Conformity |
• | Judging and Sharing: Conformity Independent of Consensus |
• | Limiting Cultural Diversity with Cultural Models |
• | Multiplex Relationships, Conformity, and General Expectations |
• | General Expectations, Cultural Sharing, and the Scope of Multiplex Relationships |
Sharing Identifying Understandings |
• | Importation in Swahili Medical Treatment: It isn't What You Know |
• | Cultural Organization and General Expectations |
"Patterns" or Common Element Organizations |
• | A "Pattern" and How It Can Be Effective Given Limited Sharing |
• | Transmission by Simplex Relationships and Its Limits |
• | Social Structure as an Independent Influence on Behavior |
• | The Social Structural Importance of Multiplex Relationships and Their General Expectations |
• | Social Structure as an Independent Influence on Behavior |
• | Culture and "Cultural Products" |
• | Wives' Power De Nihilo: Social Structure's Effects Independent from Culture |
• | Social Structure's Effect: Blocking and Channeling |
• | Hakuna Refu Lisilo Ncha : Nothing is So Long that it has No End |
Notes |
• | 1 Ethnographic and Theoretical Introduction |
• | 2 Akher Zamani Mombasa Swahili History and Contemporary Society |
• | 3 The Brotherhood of Coconuts Unity, Conflict, and Narrowing Loyalties |
• | 4 He Who Eats with You Kinship, Family, and Neighborhood |
• | 5 Understanding is Like Hair Limited Cultural Sharing and the Inappropriateness of "All by All" and "Some by Some" Models for Swahili Culture |
• | 6 Close One of Your Eyes Concealing Differences Between the Generations and the Uses of "Tokens" |
• | 7 Liking Only Those in Your Eye Relationship Terms, Statuses, and Cultural Models |
• | 8 Tongues are Spears Shame and Differentiated Conformity |
• | 9 Leaning on the Cow's Fat Hump Medical Choices, Unshared Culture, and General Expectations |
• | 10 A Wife is Clothes Family Politics, Cultural Organization, and Social Structure |
• | 11 The Dynamics of Swahili Culture A Status-Centered View |
References |
Index |
• | A |
• | B |
• | C |
• | D |
• | E |
• | F |
• | G |
• | H |
• | I |
• | J |
• | K |
• | L |
• | M |
• | N |
• | O |
• | P |
• | Q |
• | R |
• | S |
• | T |
• | U |
• | V |
• | W |
• | Y |
• | Z |