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Intensification, Social Production and the Inscrutable Ways of Culture

Intensification, Social Production and the Inscrutable Ways of Culture This paper examines Harold Brookfield's crucial concept of social production in the debates about the development of, and differences between, agricultural systems in central New Guinea. Although it was first explicitly elaborated by this eminent geographer, a striking feature of this concept is its appeal to a wide range of disciplinary specialists. No less striking is the degree to which it coheres with anthropological conceptions of culture as a realm of meaning marked by arbitrariness; consequently, culture is taken to possess an endogenous dynamic (or a ‘logic’) that gives it the role of an independent variable in the historical process. Social production, therefore, signals analytical concerns to avoid what are taken to reductionist accounts of agricultural transitions. I offer a deflationary account of social production that would make it more amenable to a naturalistic, interactionist perspective on culture and historical process; by reconstruing the cultural as the relatively micro‐historical it is more easily reconciled with macro‐historical narratives concerning intensification in central New Guinea. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Asia Pacific Viewpoint Wiley

Intensification, Social Production and the Inscrutable Ways of Culture

Gardner, Don
Asia Pacific Viewpoint , Volume 42 (2‐3) – Aug 1, 2001
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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
1360-7456
eISSN
1467-8373
DOI
10.1111/1467-8373.00144
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper examines Harold Brookfield's crucial concept of social production in the debates about the development of, and differences between, agricultural systems in central New Guinea. Although it was first explicitly elaborated by this eminent geographer, a striking feature of this concept is its appeal to a wide range of disciplinary specialists. No less striking is the degree to which it coheres with anthropological conceptions of culture as a realm of meaning marked by arbitrariness; consequently, culture is taken to possess an endogenous dynamic (or a ‘logic’) that gives it the role of an independent variable in the historical process. Social production, therefore, signals analytical concerns to avoid what are taken to reductionist accounts of agricultural transitions. I offer a deflationary account of social production that would make it more amenable to a naturalistic, interactionist perspective on culture and historical process; by reconstruing the cultural as the relatively micro‐historical it is more easily reconciled with macro‐historical narratives concerning intensification in central New Guinea.

Journal

Asia Pacific Viewpoint – Wiley

Published: Aug 1, 2001

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