So today we're gonna talk about practice
and history. Action. You know, how we go from
that level of — what we were talking about last
time — structuralisms [???], up to the level of
talking about things that people
actually do. Because remember, in
structuralism, there's a distinction
between langue and parole. The real object
of linguistics is to understand language,
not particular acts of speech. In a
similar way [???] that real object
of anthropology is not to
understand any particular statement but
that shared capacity for meaning in a
given culture that makes it possible for
someone to understand the statement; for
someone to witness a ritual and get
whatever it is they're supposed to be
getting out of it, out of it. So that
exists outside of time in a certain
sense, or it has to be imagined as existing 
outside of time. And now, as we've seen (I assume we
have last term), structural functionalism
also had its problems of time and change,
right? Traditionally — especially 
for British anthropology —
British anthropology had a tendency
to look at what they called the
"juro-political domain." Essentially at
things that always happen the same. They
defined politics as succession to
high office, as sort of dynastic cycles,
basically things that repeat. So it's not
really history at all, insofar as history
is the story of change, of unique events
the transform people's lives. They were
really interested in the way the
things don't change. And that makes a
lot of sense, considering the colonial
context of which these things happen,
where they wanted, you know, colonial officials,
governments, wanted anthropologists
above all to tell them what
cultural principles underlying
local, political and judicial forms were, because
under systems of indirect rule, those things were
supposed to maintain themselves in a
timeless equilibrium. So we can say, "Okay these
people are the Nuer," "What is the Nuer law like" we're
[???] Nuer law and having authorities enforcing Nuer law.
So actual
historical events which fundamentally change things 
where, under colonial regimes, illegal. If you
try to meet and form a political party
they could arrest you. And frequently did.
So the side effect of that was very
paradoxical in a way, because on the one
hand, people like Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski... They say, 
"We're scientists, we're trying to understand things 
that are predictable, quantifiable, you
know, that we could write down little
charts and diagrams and say that we
understand how the system works. This is
a social science."
