The notion that there was a way of life
characteristic of modern (or industrial) societies that was qualitatively
different from the way of life found in pre-modern (or folk) societies goes
back, at least, to the German sociologist Max Weber [2009]. Modern societies, said Weber, are governed by
bureaucracies; the dominant ethos is one of “rationalization,” whereby
everything is mechanized, administered according to the dictates of scientific
reason. Weber famously compared this situation to that of an “iron cage”: there
was no way the citizens of these societies could break free from their
constraints. Pre-modern societies, on
the other hand, were permeated by animism, by a belief in magic and spirits,
and governance came not through bureaucracy but through the charisma of gifted
leaders. The decline of magic that accompanied the transition to modernity
Weber called die Entzauberung der Welt–the disenchantment of the world.
He goes on
to mention other thinkers who have made similar distinctions, such as the Gemeinschaft [community based on good social
relations] and Gesellschaft [society based on contracts] cultures of Ferdinand
Tönnies (2002), the Genuine [contented, satisfied] versus Spurious [frustrated,
dysfunctional] cultures of Edward Sapir (1924), and the moral versus technical
order of Robert Redfield (1963). These
are all simple, old fashioned, distinctions about modern culture versus
“pre-modern” with the emphasis on the non-modern as being a more humane way of
life. It is them looking over the fence
and seeing greener pastures.
Of course,
he could have added Nietzsche (1872), Ruth Benedict (1934) and E. T. Hall
(1976), who also divided cultures into two types, the Apollonian-Low context
cultures versus the Dionysian-High context ones. While there is no doubt that
Hall’s Low Context Culture resembles a spurious technically ordered society it
is hard to say that Dionysian cultures are always moral orders full of
community minded folks. After all,
Dionysians can be genuinely nasty. I, of
course, prefer this distinction and emphasize that it does not force a moral
valuation of one over the other. They are
good ways to describe cultures without judging them.
To be
disenchanted, one must believe the basic premise of modern versus pre-modern,
and then draw a moral distinction. One supposedly seems better than the other
based on some yardstick of warm, sweet and cuddly versus cold and impersonal. Certainly, Weber’s work has been debated
greatly. Does rationalism and
technological change really disenchant?
Some folks don’t think so (Jenkins 2000; Landy and Saler 2009) and I
don’t think so. When people become
enchanted with science and rationality, the magic of it all isn’t called magic
but something else, such as “it’s an elegant theory” or “it’s a
no-brainer.”
However, let
us suppose that Berman is correct and play along with him. Is America disenchanted based on the criteria
outlined above? Let’s look at animism,
belief in magic and spirits, and governance via the charisma of gifted leaders. First, we do have a bureaucracy without charismatic
leaders. In my adult lifetime, back to
Reagan, I can’t think of a single person in the political realm who inspired
me. Martin Luther King was inspiring but he wasn’t a political leader. So chalk
one up for being disenchanted with our leaders.
Does
American culture have animism, magic and spirits? They dominate our popular culture. In the last year, every commercial for Jaguar
cars has been animistic; this month, the tag line for the newest commercial is,
the car is “Alive as you are.” Our entertainment
is full of wizards (Harry Potter) and
ghost hunting (Ghost Hunters, Ghost
Adventures, Haunted Collector). Moreover,
if ghosts don’t get your attention then vampires, werewolves, zombies, and
angels are there to fill the void. The
basketball player called “Magic” Johnson didn’t get his name because he plays
like a machine but because his movements are “magic.” By any standard, American popular culture is
as enchanting as any recent Brazilian carnival.
Some critics
might say that popular culture doesn’t reveal the “real” culture. This is foolishness, typically coming from older
modernists who still glorify intellectualism and “high” culture. Pop culture is our folklore, our mythology,
our soul.
To make this
point a little deeper, let’s look at a subset of American culture, the
profession of American archaeology. Do
archaeologists believe in ghosts and spirits?
Some of them do. Most of them do
not have cold-blooded clinical mentalities.
Archaeologists go into strange unusual places and they tend to find ones
that were once sacred. They are human,
all too human, and many of them are susceptible to their emotions, their
imagination, and the heebie-jeebies.
Many will tell stories of places that spooked them so much they had to leave;
others talk of having nightmares while excavating graves. Many a lab technician
has heard things go bump in the night and day, especially when human remains are
on tables or in boxes nearby. Spookiness
and archaeology go together.
Does
archaeology have animism? Very much so, it’s everywhere. Whenever archaeologists discuss artifact assemblages you will likely hear phrases such as “these are
objects of change” or “vectors of change” or “this artifact symbolizes.” Archaeologists reify and animate objects with
regularity because it’s the way Americans communicate. Animistic statements are complex metaphors
that tie us to our natural world. Objects
and technology are part of our natural environment. Tools, all material culture, are extensions
of us. There is no difference between a
cyborg and a robot. Why shouldn’t we
talk about them and interact with them as if they were alive? Likewise, we talk
about abstractions as if they were alive:
statistics “speak for themselves,” cultures "move" from one place to
another, and America is said to “fail”.
How can America “fail”; is it alive with agency? Just as in “pre-modern” cultures, it is
customary for Americans to communicate in this way.
For archaeologists artifacts have magical powers. Not every artifact or site does, but some do. If you dig a hundred shovel tests and find only one arrowhead then that moment
of discovery may be magical, special. Most archaeologists are connected to the
tools of the trade. Many have their
special trowel that symbolizes their professionalism, like a red badge of
courage. Field vehicles are old friends,
held onto for many years. Just as the
cable show Warehouse 13 demonstrates,
some artifacts are imbued with meaning and power such that they can be
transformative. Find the right type of
site or artifact and it can change your life, your career, no different from
winning a large lottery. Ideas are also
magical. Coming up with a new and
compelling interpretation or explanation can be career enhancing.
Moreover, many archaeological ideas are coyote tales, full of
trickery and suspension of disbelief. Given
a couple hundred artifacts and a few radiocarbon dates, an archaeologist can reconstruct
the life way of a culture. Do you
believe it? Archaeologists have also held
many debates over the “realness” of their artifact typologies. It doesn’t matter that sand tempered cord
marked pottery from Virginia likely resembles sand tempered cord marked pottery
from Nebraska; they have to be different based on the archaeological mentality. Many a thesis or dissertation has been
written based on the analysis of a few ceramic shards or a shoebox of
“projectile points” (many of which were likely knives or scrappers). Nevertheless, who cares? A compelling statement is what matters. Archaeologists are sometimes magicians.
Currently, there are a few charismatic characters in
archaeology. However, none of them is
leading the profession. In the recent past,
there were charismatic leaders, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. In those years, America was transforming from
an Apollonian culture steeped in rationalism into a Dionysian one based on
intuition. This transformation was the
Fourth Awakening (McLoughlin, 1978) that was a revitalization movement (Wallace
1956). It was a frenetic era with social
unrest and an unpopular war. These years are marked in archaeology as the New
Archaeology era. During this time, Louis
Binford introduced a narrow form of positivism into the profession, the idea
caught fire in popularity with minimal disbelievers, and the profession rode
the wave of “rational” ecstasy for twenty years, until it burned out. It also coincided with the broader love fest
for science that was underway in the social sciences at that time, such as the
New Ethnography, Enthnoscience, the New History, the New Geography, and
monetarism in economics.
The New Archaeology
had all the traits of an old-fashioned religious revival movement (McLoughlin,
1978). Led by a charismatic leader, it
used something old and abandoned, positivism, to make corrective changes within
the profession, to make it more scientific.
In the face of rising intuitive processes and complex metaphors it was a
retro, conservative, effort to continue rationalism that ultimately failed, as
all revivals do, because it didn’t instill long term change. When the New Archaeology flame burned out
scientism crashed in American archaeology, as it did in all of American culture
in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The irony is that the New Archaeology was a Dionysian
process, a slight of the hand, or the brain, if you will. It is well known that left hemisphere
processes (McGilchrist 2009) direct Apollonian cultures; the control, order,
hierarchy, and temporal aspects of life are emphasized over their
opposites. Rationalism is a left
hemisphere complex metaphor. But, what happens
when the right hemisphere plays with it? You get eye dazzlers.
Apollonian artifacts usually have geometric designs and they are simple and elegant—think of the popular late modernist corporate buildings from 1970s with all the rectangular glass. Next, take all those rectangles and compound them so much that the positive and negative fields are blurred. You get a design that shimmers as patterns go back and forth. It becomes an eye dazzler. The same thing happens with our concepts and ideas. Take conceptual linearity too far and you get conceptual bedazzlement. The New Archaeology, with its hypothetical deductive argumentation, was a coyote tale of bedazzlement, enchanted by its supposed rationalism.
Apollonian artifacts usually have geometric designs and they are simple and elegant—think of the popular late modernist corporate buildings from 1970s with all the rectangular glass. Next, take all those rectangles and compound them so much that the positive and negative fields are blurred. You get a design that shimmers as patterns go back and forth. It becomes an eye dazzler. The same thing happens with our concepts and ideas. Take conceptual linearity too far and you get conceptual bedazzlement. The New Archaeology, with its hypothetical deductive argumentation, was a coyote tale of bedazzlement, enchanted by its supposed rationalism.
Today, American archaeology is fully Dionysian. There are a few elder modernists holding on
to their left brained science but they live at the margins. Right-brained science and non-science are in
control; Post Modernism and Romanticism are the buzzwords of the day. Other warm and fuzzy concepts are widely used
such as collaboration and “community archaeology.” The preference is Gemeinschaft as a way of
approaching archaeology, a desire for a moral order that is genuine and democratic,
leaving everyone satisfied and fulfilled. It is enchanted archaeology.
There are problems within archaeology. While many likely believe that historic
preservation compliance is the redeeming feature of the profession, because it
drives the majority of work, it actually is a vampire sucking the soul from the
profession by reducing the total number of excavations done every year. Digging is the true life-blood of the
profession. It is what the majority of
the public wants from us; not site preservation. Archaeologists can break free
of this cage if they choose. But since they have not done so, the need is not
dire enough for it to happen.
Maybe the troubles of America that Berman documents so well in
his books could compel archaeologists to switch gears and go another
direction. I’m all in favor of it. However, an “iron cage of rationality” is not one of
those troubles. America is fully
Dionysian and enchanted; its troubles stem from the wild impulses emanating
from our right hemispheres. This will
continue until the next Awakening, some forty years hence. Meanwhile, resolving immediate problems will
have to be done by tickling the right hemisphere, and the solutions will be
based in reciprocity and reflexivity, not cause and effect.
There is no reason to be disenchanted when life is such a wonderful carnival.
There is no reason to be disenchanted when life is such a wonderful carnival.
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