Naturalizing Cultural Anthropology

Keywords

Naturalism,science,psychology,

Objectives

Through this research, we seek an approach to our final goal: integration of cultural anthropology into natural science. This project is not aimed at making natural science a research object of anthropology. Rather, it is intended to establish anthropology as a category of natural science equivalent to other fields of natural science, especially psychology and biology. This investigation begins specifically by assessing the possibility of translating anthropological terms into terms of other categories in natural science. In other words, reduction is the methodology of this study. Candidate fields as destinations of reduction are psychology (cognitive psychology and social psychology) and biology (evolutionary biology and epidemiology). A part of the philosophy that is promoting naturalization vigorously as a model is also consulted. Although this study might be regarded negatively as a move toward “dissolution of anthropology,” the author believes that the naturalization of cultural anthropology can be a motivating factor to change and develop natural science.

Research Results

The 119th regular gathering of the University of Tokyo’s Contemporary Anthropology Workshop was held on March 21, 2021, under the theme of “Bringing nature into anthropology.” Given that this conference recapitulated the details of the four years of workshops, here we will summarize the discussion. Nakagawa (Osamu) was unable to participate, so his research has been summed up based on the manuscript he submitted. The conference also featured remarks made by University of Tokyo Professor Emeritus Sugawara Kazuyoshi, but since the professor is not a workshop member, we have foregone summarizing his remarks.
The conference had a two-part structure: a “foundations” segment that highlighted diachronic orientations, followed by an “applications” segment that highlighted synchronic orientations. The foundations segment featured presentations that touched on a threshold problem (how is it that people acquire culture) and the origin of symbols (non-natural symbols). The presentation themes included: the origin of collaborative activities among Japanese macaques (Yamada), imitation and the naturalization of language (Takada), fetishism as the archetype of symbols (Nakagawa Satoshi), affordance and relevance theory (Iida), and the uses of metaphor in anthropology (Nakamura). The foregoing presentations received comments about the concept of affordance and other points from social psychologist Professor K. Karasawa . The applications segment featured presentations on the entanglements between actor-network theory (ANT) and Naturalism. The presentation themes included: imitation and narratives (Hamamoto), Indian political movements (Matsuo), Indian environmental movements and legislation (Nakazora), and on how Hmong immigrants get by (Nakagawa Osamu). The foregoing presentations received comments from philosophy professor Dr. K. Todayama on such matters as the concept of representation.
The day after the conference itself, participants took questions from audience members via slack. The question-and-answer session there assured us that the “anthropology of Naturalism” that we have been aiming for had been largely understood.