Processual and Structural Approaches in Political Anthropology: A Commentary Author(s): Marc J.

Swartz Source: Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des tudes Africaines, Vol. 3, No. 1, Special Issue: Rural Africa (Winter, 1969), pp. 53-59 Published by: Canadian Association of African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/483574 . Accessed: 29/09/2013 16:27
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Processual and Structural Approaches

in Political Anthropology: A Commentary

Marc J. Swartz*
Although there are a plethora of specific issues and an infinity of particular questions and hypotheses concerning political behavior, there are only two fundamental orientations now being used to approach these issues and their attendant questions: structural and processual. Before considering the basic differences between these two approaches, let us remind ourselves of the conventional meaning attached to the key words. "Process", according to one dictionary' means "a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner"; or "a systematic series of actions directed to some end." "Processual" is not listed in this dictionary, but I take this term to be the adjectival form of the noun and a "processual approach" to be one which looks at phenomona with an emphasis on
the "continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place ...." rather

than on anything else. "Structure," according to this same dictionary,2 means "a complex system considered from the point of view of the whole rather than of any single part e.g. the structure of modern science" or "anything composed of parts arranged together in some ways; an organization." "Structural" is defined as "of or pertaining to a structure; pertaining or essential to a structure" or "of or pertaining to the assumption that the elements of a field of study are naturally arranged in a systematic structure: e.g. structural linguistics".3 It is particularly important to notice the difference between 'structure' and 'structural' since considerations of structure are a necessary part of any study of politics whereas structural assumptions, as seen in the second sense of 'structural,' above, are what really separate the two approaches. In his article in this issue, Southall confounds an interest in structure with the assumption that "the elements of a field of study are naturally arranged in a systematic structure" and thereby confuses our understanding of the character of processual approaches at the same time that he obscures the fundamental difficulty in structural approaches. I had thought the difference between "structure" and
* Professor of Anthropology, Michigan State University.
1. Jess 2. Ibid., 3. Ibid., Stein, 1410. 1419. ed., The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, The

Unabridged Edition (New York, 1966), 1147.

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THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES

"structuralism" was clear by now, but if there are others who also fail to see it and its place in differentiating the two approaches, it is worthwhile to demonstrate that: a) processual approaches are and have been vitally interested in structure, and that b) the assumption of structural arrangements of a natural and systematic sort are characteristic of structuralism alone. The importance of structure - in the sense of an arrangement of parts, or, looking at the whole instead of a single part-- was made clear in the introduction to Political Anthropology. To take one example, in discussing the relationship involved in the slave trade in West, East, and East-Central Africa Turner said, "The 'structure' of the political system in each component society of the trade circle can be adequately studied only after the society's position in the total political field related to the trade circle has been analyzed. The character if its role in the political structure of a society acquires a special '

trade is that of raider rather than raided..."

Numerous such indications of our interest in structure can be found and should, one would have thought, have been sufficient to make that interest clear. However, the issue is removed from doubt by the introduction to part IV, "Political Fields and Their Boundaries." The first part of the first paragraph of this introduction makes our position on the importance of structure explicit. '"The emphasis placed on the importance of processes in the study of politics should not be taken to mean that structural variables are without importance. On the contrary, great significance is attached to understanding the structures of the groups involved in political activity and the structural position of key actors."' In a recent attempt to refine the initial formulation of our conceptual scheme for a processual approach to the study of politics, this time without Professor Turner's invaluable collaboration (and he is the originator of this viewpoint), I devote nearly seven pages to suggestions for the "non-structural study of structure"., The foregoing should establish that the processual approach with which Turner and I are associated is deeply concerned with the arrangements of actors into groups and the relations of groups to one another; at the risk of further charges of Madison Avenue behavior I must confess that I know no other attempts to formulate such an approach in anthropology. This will not,
4. M. Swartz, V. Turner and A. Tuden, eds., Political Anthropology (Chicago, 1966), 5. Ibid., 247. 6. M. Swartz, "Introduction," Local-Level Politics, M. Swartz, ed. (Chicago, 1968), 38-45. 30.

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PART I: POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

of course, convince thoroughly committed structuralists that sufficient weight is being given to what they think of as structure, but that is as ought to be since the basic difference between our position and structuralism hinges upon our refusal to assume that the "elements...are naturally arranged in a systematic structure" and their insistence upon doing so. This assumption, and it always carries the implication that the structure in question is perduring, is sometimes wholly implicit and usually at least partly so, but is essential to all structural approaches and can be seen in the articles preceding this one. In Professor Cohen's article we see a good deal of concern for process both within political groups which are recognizably the same over a long period, such as his desire for more detailed information about how traditional African political systems work, and also in the visible transformation of groups, for example, his interest in how currently observed political relations emerged from different, antecedent ones. This processual interest, however, exists together with the view that structures are the perduring and natural units for analysis. It is not a concern with process alone which makes the processual approach different from the structural approach. As Southall observes, everybody is interested in process and has been for sometime. What is distinctive about the processual approach is the absence of the assumption of lasting structures and the refusal to assign these structures primacy in investigation and analysis. Despite his genuine interest in process, Cohen does appear to assume the primacy of structure and to pose problems which reflect this assumption while omitting some valuable enquires because of the limitations this assumption imposes. In the last category, the study of "incorporations" which Cohen defines as "the absorption of one polity by another such that one assumes a subordinate position with respect to the other" comes to attention. For the varied political systems of Africa, he says that what needs to be worked out are the patterns, conditions and results of their incorporation into larger systems. Obviously, the questions which concern Professor Cohen are valuable and interesting ones, but what is troublesome is the ready assumption that the units for analysis are known before the studies are made. Perhaps not all the fruitful issues arise with respect to the units, "traditional systems" and "larger systems." Perhaps, more fundamentally, whatever the units of analysis may prove to be, studies focussing their attention upon predetermined structures will not find the most stimulating and useful results. The main point here, however, is that the assumptions of structuralism are present in this work and that it is these assumptions which differentiate it from processual studies. A much more obvious example of the presence of structuralist assumptions and their effect upon formulating questions and propositions about politics can be seen in Professor Southall's paper. Having granted that dynamics do

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LE JOURNAL CANADIEN DES ETUDES AFRICAINES

not concern "the mere question of the movement of components within a system," he belabors the editors of Political Anthropology for failing to give proper significance to group and system boundries and, inter alia, for seeming to propose that political process be studied in a vacuum without the context of structure or system. His view is that the only possibility for comparison, generalization, or progress or understanding of any kind is if we grant what he regards as the unquestionable necessity of system. He tells us that Easton has made clear that system is a construct and that although what we study may be a system in itself, we must treat the data we deal with "in terms of a system in order to discover how far they conform to it or not." Although systems may be either "interesting or trivial," he assures us that "without them we can do nothing." Southall's argument, then, is that although our data may not come from systems and although the systems themselves, if they do exist, may be trivial, we are powerless without the construct 'system.' This would be an extraordinary position if it were not so ordinary. It is, in fact, a straightforward statement of the structuralist position with particular emphasis given to the primacy of assumed structure. Southall explicitly rejects the implication that his assumed structures are perduring. He tells us, in fact, that the issue of homeostasis would have been dead had Political Anthropology not raised it again. However, if the systems are not homeostatic enough to continue in their present form, i.e. at the time of observation for a considerable period, how can we use them as the basis of comparison, generalization, and progress in understanding, as Southall says we must? In short, for all his protestations, Southall would appear to be in the position of either accepting the perduring implication which accompanies the primacy assigned to assumed structures or of abandoning the assumption which is basic to structuralism. He comes to grips with this problem by saying that although processes other than those contributing to the continuation of existing structures do occur, so also do contrary processes. "For myself, I find it necessary to admit than in human affairs as I see them, the forces of system maintenance do predominate, despite the appalling destructiveness of man. The destruction of one half built system is never complete, but substantial parts of it are built into the next. .... A certain bias towards conflict resolution and equilibrium rather than chaos seems undeniable, but no specific equilibrium may ever be reached and the whole arrangement of partial systems and subsystems is always in process of becoming." I find myself in agreement with my colleague, Southall, as he states his position in the above quote which is assembled from two separate pages. I do
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PART I: POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

not, however, see how this position can be maintained together with the assumed primacy of structure. If structures or systems do not ever, or even sometimes, finish coming into being, how can we use these structures as the basis for all our formulations about politics? Quite possibly, what he means when he says that 'system' is a construct is that, although we must always proceed as though we are studying systems which are stable and enduring, we will, at most, only sometimes be doing so. The seriousness of this can only be appreciated when it is remembered that these systems, which are at least sometimes figments of our scientific imaginations, are assigned an essential and basic role in all attempts to understand politics. That is, to avoid studying "political processes in a vacuum" we must invent, if necessary, a structure within which we study and analyze them. The obvious question here is why must we do this? Surely not in order to investigate and analyze the relationships between actors in the processes being studied or between actually discovered, as opposed to assumed, relations between groups with empirically demonstrated boundaries. As I have tried to indicate very briefly here and as is shown in the introductions to Political Anthropology and Local-Level Politics the processual approach will allow us to do this and does not require us to base our studies on fantasy. Southall seems to have one final argument. It is that without the assumption of structure we have no units to delimit our investigations or to serve as the basis for comparison and generalization. This, I think, is the most powerful argument for structuralism and is one of the main reasons this approach has lasted so long despite its manifest difficulties. The problem is, however, not an insuperable one and the concept of 'field' together with the related concept 'arena' appear to suggest a solution which avoids the difficulties of the structuralist assumption and yet tells us where to look for our data and what to compare and/or use as the basis of generalization. A complete discussion of 'field' and 'arena' and how they might be useful in the analysis of politics can be found in the introduction to Local Level Politics, but a very brief indication here of what they involve may show that the processual approach not only allows us to formulate generalizations, but it does so without requiring us to distort reality to suit our scientific fancy. A 'field' is composed of all those who are 'directly involved' (and this needs to be specified for each particular study) in the process under investigation during the time period being considered together with the resources the field members use in the process. Entering the field may require the expenditure of resources (e.g., energy, money or prestige) and if so, the field has a boundary with ascertainable resistance to penetration. The 'arena' is composed of all those who are directly involved with the field participants in processes other than the one which is under investigation. Thus, if we are studying factions in 57

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THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES

an Indian rural setting, the field might be made up of certain adult men who spend some of their time manouevering, planning, and otherwise participating in factional behavior together with the money, land rights, kinship connections, state government contacts, and whatever other resources they use in their factional contention with one another. The arena would be composed of the families, neighbors, clients, and government officials who are not participants in the factional behavior at a given time together with the resources available to these individuals and the resources at the command of the field members which are not being used in the field. Clearly, both the field and the arena which surrounds and includes it are fluid and we have to trace changes in the composition of both over time. Nevertheless, generalization and comparison are possible using the field-arena concepts as a base and centering on the processes we use to define the fields and, therefrom, the arenas. One sort of generalization which is possible, and of inestimable value, concerns the phases of development of the processes and the consequent developments in the field and arena as concerns their membership, organization and employment of resources. Turner has made a characteristically brilliant beginning in his formulation of phase development' and the verification and application to particular types of field-arena configurations (e.g., those centering on cooperative processes, those centering on processes where the resources in the field are of various sorts, etc.) Another sort of generalization comes out of Nicholas' study of segmentary factional systems'. His study suggests, although the conceptual scheme in which I put his findings did not exist at the time he did the research, that when there is a figure-eight arena (i.e., one in which there are two sets of individuals and resources both directly connected to the participants in a field but connected to each other only through the field participants) with markedly unequal distribution of resources in the two parts of the arena (when one 'loop' of the eight contains government officials with their funds, patronage, etc. and the other 'loop' is made up of the impoverished families and rural associates of the field members given a constant membership field centered on a variety of different processes, at different times), all the political fields which form in that arena will focus around segmentary, factional process. This telegraphic presentation of two important generalizations cannot possibly serve to explain, let alone defend them, but the purpose was to show that generalization, including generalization about the effects of particular kinds of structures, is possible within the framework of the processual approach and that, far from making generalization and analysis impossible, the absence of the
7. Swartz, Turner and Tuden, eds., op. cit., 32-39; and W. Victor Turner, Schism and Continuity in an African Society (Manchester, 1957). 8. Ralph W. Nicholas, "Segmentary Factional Political Systems," in Swartz, Turner, and Tuden, eds., op. cit., 49-60.

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PART I: POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

structuralist assumption frees us for kinds of investigations hindered by structuralism. I have used so much of the strictly limited space allotted me here for discussing the differences between structural and processual approaches and trying to show the value of the latter that I have no opportunity to address myself to Professor Perlman's excellent paper, to consider the numerous important points in Professor Cohen's essay, or to discuss the remainder of Professor Southall's dissatisfaction with Political Anthropology. I can only say that I do not find the dissatisfactions unanswerable any more than I find the issues and ideas unstimulating. It is simply that my space runneth over.

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