Expressive culture

1. Expressive culture • The most superstructural feature of culture is expressive behavior. • Expressive culture comprises visual arts, music, dance, games, folklore, and ritual.

2. Art and superstructure • Expressive culture clearly appeals to the emotional needs of producers and consumers. • But expressive culture is the most superstructural feature of culture. • If sex roles, for example, or mental illness have some biological basis, there is no argument for it with expressive behavior, other than the capacity for abstract expression itself.

3. The emotional component, however, is plastic: Where does the emotional component of art come from? • Is it a random event? Is it rule driven? • If it is rule driven, then superstructure, at some level of time, and to some degree, reflects structural and infrastructural components of society.

4. Culture and … culture • Music, dance, visual art, and games and folklore all are driven by the structural and infrastructural parts of society to some degree – at the macro level.

5. Body art is universal • Body art is universal and, in addition to simple adornment, may be used to denote sex differences, rank, occupation, ethnicity, or religion • Body decorations or modifications, attachments, and clothing are used in many societies as sexual attractors: ears, neck, lips, tattoos, beards

6. The most ancient art • Ancient cave art of the Magdalenian, Perigoridan, and Azilian • Lascaux France • Ekain Spain

7. Rice and Patterson • Patricia Rice and Ann Patterson examined the animal bones in 90 caves where late Paleolithic art is found • Most common bones: bovines, horse, reindeer, ibex, deer, mammoth • Most common paintings: reindeer, horse, bovines, deer, ibex, mammoth

8. Fear and loving in the Paleolithic • For the number of portrayals and the percentage of bone matter, r=.41. • But larger species (mammoth, horse, bison) are overportrayed. • The correlation between species weight and bone prevalence is r=.76 • 19 experts ranked species for danger in hunting. For average ranked danger and species weight, r=.96

9. Primitive art • In light of everything you’ve learned this semester, what can be said of the term “primitive art”? • Many Western artists incorporated so-called primitive elements in their work: Stravinsky, Picasso, Gaugin, Chavez

10. Fischer’s hypothesis • Egalitarian societies have art based on repetition of simple elements and plenty of empty space. • The art of stratified societies combines elements into complex designs and tends toward a more baroque style.

11. Egalitarian Stratified Repetition of simple elements Integration of diverse elements empty space filled space symmetrical design asymmetrical design Unenclosed figures Enclosed figures

12. Art and practicality • Art is part of everyday life in most societies, as is religion, kinship, economics, and politics. • Why is modern Western art valued for originality and obscurity of meaning? • Harris: mass production, capitalism, and commercialization has led to individ-ualistic, secular art as part of our everyday life.

13. Ancient Greek vase art • Ancient Greek society went from egalitarian to highly stratified between 1000 BCE and 450 BCE – and the vases became crowded and complex, with enclosed art. • Dressler and Robbins 1975

16. Meaning and folklore • “If a mythology gives prominence to evil grandmothers, then people say ‘in that society, grandmothers are evil’ and the myths reflect reality. But if there is conflict between myth and observed behavior, then clever people talk about myth expressing ‘repressed feelings,’ or whatever” (Claude Levi-Strauss 1967:203).

17. Universal themes in folklore • Clyde Kluckhohn: five recurrent themes in folklore around the world: • catastrophe (mostly floods) • slaying of monsters • Incest • sibling rivalry • castration. • These universal themes are not equally likely to be found in any given place.

18. Alex Cohen, for example, found that unprovoked aggression is associated with unpredictable food shortages and that in societies with such shortages, natural catastrophes are not likely to be mentioned. 

19. Music and structural correlates • Alan Lomax studied folk song style around the world, using a corpus of 3,500 songs. • He found a relationship between social complexity and stylistic elements of music, just as Fischer did with art.

20. Lomax’s study of music • For example, wordiness and clarity of enunciation is associated with stratified societies. • These societies depend on wordiness for job performance and for maintaining a highly diverse occupational structure. • Lomax’s hypothesis: complex instruction is expressed in complex songs.

21. By contrast, hunters and gatherers all know their roles and engage in song for its own sake and for the simple pleasure of singing. • In other words, the music does not serve the purpose of validating social structural complexity. • H/G songs are characterized by repetition of a few simple elements, by relaxed rendition – tra la, tra la, etc.

22. Lomax’s findings • H/G societies have no leaders in song • Intermediate societies (ranked leader, with no real power, like the Big Men societies of Papua and the Yanomami of the Amazon), have leaders who START songs, just as a Yanomami leader starts sweeping his village center and hopes that by example he can get others to follow (see Kottak). • Highly stratified societies have soloists and leaders of songs – virtuosos – reflecting the structure of society in economic and political spheres of action.

23. Finally, Lomax found that counterpoint and polyphony are NOT the products of our so-called high culture, but of women in societies where women contribute at least half or more of the total food. • Conversely, men sing most in societies that have low contribution by women for subsistence – like the Eskimos.

24. Barbara Ayres on music and structure • In societies that use cradle boards and cradles for babies, there are either irregular or free rhythms. • Where babies are carried in a sling or shawl, there are regular rhythms. • Where infants are stressed before the age of two, there is wider tonal range and firmer accents and beats. • Ayres, B. 1973. Effects of Infant Carrying Practices on Rhythm in Music. Ethos 1: 387-404

25. Circumcision, severe toilet training, cauterization, cicatrization, piercing and shaping/binding procedures for infants all are associated with a particular kind of music expression. • In societies that stress compliance, there is cohesive singing. • Japanese games, song fests, are group events. • Meals begin in Japan when everyone is at the table.

26. Ayres found that harshness of voice tone and raspiness increases with assertiveness training for children. • So, in societies with high assertiveness for women and with high food production by women (as in W. Africa and African American) you get more raspy, more assertive tonal qualities in song. • Ayres, B. 1973. Effects of Infant Carrying Practices on Rhythm in Music. Ethos 1: 387-404

27. John Roberts’ study of games • Games are standardized play. All societies have games, but differ in how much they engage in this activity and in the kind of games they play.

28. Three kinds of games • 1) physical skill: boxing, racing, hockey • 2) strategy: chess, checkers, Go (Wei Ch’i/Baduk) • 3) chance (dice, roulette) • Combinations: football, monopoly

29. Sports and structure • Sports is not immune to the principle of expressive culture being responsive to structural features of society. • John Roberts found that in 43 societies tested, games of strategy are associated with more complex political organization. • Note the symbolism of hierarchy expressed in chess and card decks.

30. Team sports • But team sports are a Native American invention. • Greek sports at the Olympics were solitary. • Before the 16th century, there were almost no team games in Europe except for rituals to separate winter from spring.

31. Team sports are Native American • Hockey originated in Eastern North America and was probably a local adaptation of the ancient ball game played from Arizona to El Salvador in Middle America. • In these games, teams comprised 2-10 or 11 and the stakes were high: jewels and clothing from the audience to the winner, betting going on in the audience, and even sacrifice of the loser.

32. Ancient ball game and rubber • In 1528, Hernan Cortez brought Aztec ball players to the court of Charles V. • This was the introduction of the idea of team sports in Europe, according to Roberts’ research. • It also eventually showed that vulcanized rubber was invented in Mexico 3600 years ago.

33. Gambling • Roberts also found that gambling is not universal. • North America and Middle America have it • Most of the peoples of South America did not have it • East Africa has little gambling, but West Africa has lots of it. • So far, there is no explanation for this distribution.

34. Syncretism • Across the world today, the most obvious feature of expressive culture is syncretism. • This is part of globalization, but it may be very slow to occur in some areas of expressive culture and faster to occur in others. • Music and food are particularly syncretic.

35. Tourist art • The other great movement in art today is tourist art. • The alebrijes of Oaxaca • African tourist art • Tourist art in Africa is different from indigenous art

36. Alebrijes Encyclopedia of Mexico), Volume I. Compañía Editora de Enciclopedia de México, S.A. de C.V., Mexico, 1987.