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社会类
1.The function of Art
Art has an effect on the individual and on a particular culture in a society. Psychologically, art enhances life by adding beauty to our surroundings. It is a source of pleasure and relaxation from the stresses of life. Socially, art plays a number of different roles by virtue of its capacity to embody symbolic significance to its audience.
Art and Social Organization
Art fulfills a number of important social functions. It is used to communicate the various statues people hold. It can play a role in regulating economic activities. And it is almost always a means for expressing important political and religious ideas and religious ideas and for teaching principles that are valued in society. These and other social uses of art function to preserve the established social organization of each society.
Status Indication
One of the social functions of art is the communication of status differences between individuals. For instance, gender differences in body decorations and dress are typical of cultures throughout the world. Age differences may be similarly indicated. Puberty rituals often include tattooing, scarification of the body in decoration designs, or even filing of the teeth to between children and adults. Social class differences in complex societies also involve aesthetic markers such as the clothing people wear and the kinds of artworks the use as decorations of their homes. According to Sahlins, social and economic class, age and gender differences are noticeable even in the kinds of fabrics people’s clothing is made from. For instance, silks in mist societies are predominantly worn by women, especially those who are part of the upper classes and those who are middle-aged.
Economic Functions
Economic life, by virtue of its practical importance to its our survival and to our standard of living, can sometimes be a source of conflict between groups that must carry out exchange with one another. Sometimes art, perhaps because it is valued for its nonutilitarian qualities, can play a role of maintaining harmony in such settings.
Religious Functions
Much of dramatic and emotional impact of religion derives from its use of art. Religious rituals everywhere include song and dance performances, and the visual arts function to heighten the emotional component of religious experience in all parts of the world, by portraying important scenes and symbols from religious history and mythology. In some cultures, art and religious ritual are inseparable. For instance, among the Abelam of Papua New Guinea, all art is produced for use in rituals.
Didactic Functions
Art is often employed as a means for teaching important cultural ideas and values. For instance, hymns in Western religious express theological concepts and encourage the support of specific religious values.
Political functions
Art often functions to legitimize the authority of government.
As a statement about the legitimacy of governmental authority, art is a conservative force in society. In this role, it is intended to elicit loyalty and to stabilize society and its political system. Governments also sometimes deliberately employ this aspect of art as propaganda urging public action that supports official policy. Thus, propagandistic are embodies both didactic and political functions.
2.Intercultural Prejudices
In complex societies with large populations and many competing groups, prejudices between groups within the society may become a common element of daily experience, varying from good-natures rivalry to direct antipathies. In the United States, we may think of our own state as “God’s own country,” our politics as the only rational way of doing things or our religion as the only road to salvation.
The attitude that one’s own culture is the naturally superior one, the standard by which all other cultures should be judged, and that cultures different from one’s own are inferior is such a common way of reacting to other’s customs that it is given a special name by anthropologists. Ethnocentrism, centered in one’s ethos, the Greek word for a people or a nation, is found in every culture. People allow their judgments about human nature and about the relative merits of different ways of life to be guided by ideas and values that are centered narrowly on the way of life of their own society.
Ethnocentrism serves a society by creating greater feelings of group unity. When individuals speak ethnocentrically, they affirm their loyalty to the ideals of their society and elicit in other persons of the group shared feelings of superiority about their social body. This enhances their sense of identity as members of the same society and as bearers of a common culture. A shared sense of group superiority—especially during its overt communications between group members—can help them overlook internal differences and prevent conflicts that could otherwise decrease the ability of the group to undertake effectively coordinated action.
For most human history, societies have been smaller than the nations of today, and most people have interacted only with members of their own society. Under such circumstances, the role of ethnocentrism in helping a society to survive by motivating its members to support one another in their common goals has probably outweighed its negative aspects. However, ethnocentrism definitely has a darker side. It is a direct barrier to understanding among peoples of diverse customs and values. It enhances enmity between societies and can be a motivation for conflict among peoples whose lives are guided by different cultures.
3.Culture Shock
Anthropologies who engage in fieldwork in a culture that differs from the one in which they grew up often experience a period of disorientation or even depression known as culture shock before they become acclimatized to their new environment. Even tourists who travel for only a short time outside their own nations may experience culture shock, and unless they are prepared for its impact, they may simply transform their own distress into a motive for prejudice against their host society.
4.Groups
The members of social groups generally identify themselves symbolically with a name or some other emblem of their group identity. Commonly, the identifying emblem indicates the activity that draws the members together or represents some other important aspect of the group’s characteristics. Thus, the group identity of the United States of America is symbolized by a flag that portrays the political unity of that society’s 50 states by a group of 50 stars. The great Seal of the United States of America contains the image of an eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows, symbols of peace and war, which suggest that the major purpose of the nation as a political entity is to maintain internal order and to defend the group. A smaller, more face-to face group, such as a basketball team, may identify itself as a united body by naming itself and by symbolizing its athletic purpose with some symbol of its prowess, such as a changing bull or a flying hawk.
5.Authority
It will not come as surprise that a society that admires independence and progress does not have an automatic respect of authority. What deference people in authority do command is base on their actual power rather than on their age, wisdom, or dignity. Old people are often seen as behind times. It’s the young who are expected to have some special insight into the modem world.
After all, it was by overthrowing the King of England that the United States was born, and suspicion of authority has remained a pillar of American life. This attitude has helped establish the USA as the birthplace of innovations that have changed the world. If a better way of doing something that changes as fast as ours, experience simply does not have the value that it does in traditional societies.
6.The No-Status Society
In a status society, people learn their places and gain some dignity and security from having a place in the social order. Americans, however, are taught not to recognize their places and to constantly assert themselves. This can manifest itself in positive ways—hard work, clever ideas—but also in ongoing dissatisfaction.
As an American is always striving to change his lot, he never fully identifies with any group. We have no expressions such as in China “the fat pig gets slaughtered,” or in Japan, where “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Here, everybody is trying to stick out, which limits closeness between people. We say, “It’s the squeaky where that gets the grease. According to Alan Roland, author of In Search of self in India and Japan, in the United States “a militant individualism has been combined with enormous social mobility,” leaving very group identity.
Roland psychoanalyzed Americans, Indians and Japanese and discovered that the two Asian cultures had no concept of the strong inner separation from other that is characteristic of Americans. Because our society is so competitive, we feel in the end that we can only rely on ourselves.
7.Conformity
To an American, what the world thinks of him is extremely important. Only through the eyes of others can success have significance. The theory of culture analyst David Riesman is that Americans are no longer primarily governed by inner values handed down through generations. Instead, he thinks American have become outer-directed people-guided not by their own consciences but by the opinions of others. To be like is crucial.
Although individualism is central in American—in the sense that the self comes first—Americans are not individualists. Actually, persons in status societies who are secure in their niches are allowed more eccentricity than Americans, who rely heavily on signals that other people like them. In America, popularity is a sign of success and terribly important. Nobody can have too many friends—as long as they don’t take up too much of their valuable time.
8.Debating Moral Questions
Nowhere is modern thinking more muddled than over the question of whether it is proper to debate moral issues. Many argue it is not, saying it is wrong to make “value judgments.” This view is shallow. If such judgments were wrong, then ethics, philosophy, and theology would be unacceptable in a college curriculum—an idea that is obvious silly. As the following cases illustrate, it is impossible to avoid making value judgments.
No matter how difficult it may be to judge such moral issues, we must judge them. Value judgment is the basis not only of our social code, but of our legal system. The quality of our laws is directly affected by the quality of our moral judgments. A society that judges blacks inferior is not likely to accord blacks equal treatment. A society that believes a woman’s place is in the home is not likely to guarantee women equal employment opportunity.
Other people accept value judgments as long as they are made within a culture, and not about other cultures. Right and wrong, they believe, vary from one culture to another. It is true that an act frowned upon in one culture may be tolerated in another, but the degree of difference has often been grossly exaggerated. When we first encounter an unfamiliar moral view, we are inclined to focus on the difference so much that we miss the similarity.
Is it legitimate, then, for us to pass judgment on the moral standards of another culture? Yes, if we do so thoughtfully, and not just conclude that whatever differs from our views necessarily wrong. We can judge, for example, a culture that treats women as property, or places less value on their lives than on the lives of men. Moreover, we can say a society is acting immorally by denying women their human rights.
Surely it is irresponsible for us to withhold judgment on the morality of these cases merely because they occurred in a different culture. It is obvious that in both cases the men’s response, murder, was out of all proportion to the women’s “offenses,” and therefore demonstrated a wanton disregard for the women’s human rights. Their response is this properly judged immoral. And this judgment implies another—that the culture condoning such behavior is guilty of moral insensitivity.
9.Art as Nonverbal Communication
Like language and social organization, art is essential to man. As embellishment and as creation of objects beyond requirements of the most basic needs of living, art has accompanied man since prehistoric times. Because of its almost unfailing consistency as an element of many societies, art may be a response to some biological or psychological need. Indeed, it is one of the most constant forms of human behavior.
American art is functional. Its function is its purpose, whether it is economic, magical, or religious. There is, though, some of art for its own sake such as in the embellishment of pulleys used in weaving. The carving on the pulley may not take for a stronger pulley (a metal hook would be cheaper and stronger), but when asked why another king wasn’t used, the weaver answered, “One does not want to live without pretty things.”
African art is a way of experiencing the world. All its forms, whether masks, sculpture, houses, fabrics, pottery, poetry, music, or dance, render the invisible and reveal the meaning of the confrontation between life and death (it was Paul Klee, influenced by African art, who said that the task of art was to make the invisible visible.)
The African artist works from the force to the form that embodies it. Until the twentieth century, European artists, inspired by Greek traditions, started from a concrete form, usually that of the human figure, to express the divine. The African artist, however, begins with a sense of a spiritual presence inside him, which he then expresses through art, in a concrete form.
The African artist works from the force to the form that embodies it. Until the twentieth century, European artists, inspired by Greek traditions, started from a concrete form, usually that of the human figure, to express the divine. The African artist, however, begins with a sense of a spiritual presence inside him, which he then express through art, in a concrete form.
The African artist is not considered an artist. He may be a farmer who carves or a smith who is endowed with magical powers. The responsibility for understanding the operation of forces issuing from the divine power, and of controlling them in a meaningful way, lies in the medicine man or priest. It is the priest who communicates the need for a certain form to the carver if it is to have some spiritual endowment. (That is why carvers don’t see anything wrong in copying another carver’s work. Copying is just another form of flattery.)
The African conception of art is a communal conception as compared with European individualistic expression. To the African, community existed prior to the individual, and the individual is just a small part of a long tradition. The sense of unity extends to nature and to the earth—earth belongs to ancestors.
Secret societies, supporting the medicine man, maintain standards of behavior by special initiation tests, rituals for many occasions, oaths of secrecy, and the like. They supervise morality, uphold tribal traditions, and dispense justice. They set standards for art forms from birth through puberty, marriage, and death. Masks, sculptures in the form of ancestor figure, fetish, and ritual implements (rattles and drums) conform to these traditions. Fetishes are objects endowed with magical powers for a special purpose and are usually crudely fashioned by the medicine man.
African art gives form to the supernatural and invisible. Its abstract imagery does not even attempt to imitate concrete appearances. How does one represent the power and virtue of an ancestor or the rhythm of an animal concretely? From this emerge a rhythmic unity and a reduction of every formal element to its eternal geometry.
African art is one that is in equilibrium with nature and forms a communication with nature. To the African, sculpture can be a receptacle of the ancestor’s spirituality and has the ability to transmit that spirituality when necessary. Its message or meaning becomes its presence.
African art is closer to life than the art of other countries. Its art forms are within every man’s reach. They are a necessity, an integral force, and a part of living. As functional forms, they invite direct participation in their uses. This is the vitality of American art.
In summary, African art explains the past, describes values and a way of life, helps man relate to supernatural forces, mediates his social relations, expresses emotions, and enhances man’s present life as an embellishment denoting pride or status as well as providing entertainment (such as with dance and music).
10.Turtle Island
There are many things in Western culture that are admirable. But a culture that alienates itself from the very ground of its own being—from the wildness Outside (that is to say, wild nature, the wild, self-contained, self-informing, ecosystems) and from that other wilderness, the wilderness within—is doomed to a very destructive behavior, ultimately perhaps self-destructive behavior.
A line is drawn between primitive peoples and civilized peoples. I think there is a wisdom in the world view of primitive peoples that we have to refer ourselves to, and learn from. If we are on the verge of postcivilization, then our next step must take account of the primitive world view which has traditionally and intelligently tried to keep open lines of communication with the forces of nature. You cannot communicate with the forces of nature in a laboratory. One of the problems is that we simply do not know much about primitive people and primitive cultures. If we can tentatively accommodate the possibility that nature has a degree of authenticity and intelligence that requires that we look at it more sensitively, then we can move on to the next step. |
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楼主: zhangheng1020
发表于 2006-1-16 18:45:46
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