The idea that there are patterns in culture runs throughout anthropological theory—from Benedict’s modal personalities (chapter 6) to Fernandez’s play of tropes (chapter 21)—but there are
equally recurrent suspicions that cultural patterns are imposed by
the ethnographer or that such patterns are less important than
other fundamental forces, such as environmental factors, individual self-interest, or the internal forces of social forms. Ortner
(1989:198–202) contends that neither position is absolutely correct
and argues for a “loosely structured” social actor “who is
prepared—but no more than that—to find most of his or her culture intelligible and meaningful, but who does not necessarily
find all parts of it equally meaningful in all times and places”
(1989:198). Different actors have varying relationships to their culture, even when they employ the same symbols from a cultural
repertoire. Further, those relationships change as new social configurations emerge and people attempt to “to find meaning where
one did not find it before (or indeed changing or losing meaning
as well)” (Ortner 1989:199). The problem is not whether cultural
meanings are irrelevant or embedded, but rather to understand
“how people react to, cope with, or actively appropriate external
phenomena, on the basis of the social and cultural dynamics that
both constrain and enable their responses” (Ortner 1989:200).
Those responses are enabled and constrained by key scenarios (which Ortner also calls “cultural schemes”). Key scenarios/
cultural schemes are
preorganized schemes of action, symbolic programs for the
staging and playing out of standard social interactions in a
particular culture. . . . [E]very culture contains not just bundles
of symbols, and not even just bundles of larger propositions
about the universe (“ideologies”), but organized schemas for
enacting (culturally typical) relations and situations. (Ortner
1989:60)
Ortner contends that such key scenarios or cultural schemas
frequently crystallize around a society’s internal contradictions.
Ortner’s rich Himalayan ethnography illustrates this point and
anchors its theoretical implications, but an example from American society might clarify issues before turning to the Sherpa
case.
The United States, for example, is often described as a nation
where “anyone can grow up to become president” despite the
historical reality that every American president has been a white
“Christian” male. This is an obvious contradiction. If asked to
explain this contradiction, we do not attempt to “solve” the contradiction nor do we stop repeating the phrase, but rather we appeal to key scenarios. We might say that America is “a place of
change” and that “the day will come” when a person of color, a
Jew, or a woman will be elected president of the United States.
We “explain” the contradiction by appealing to a scenario, one
that makes cultural sense and describes a course of action
(“work hard, and you can become president”).
Interestingly, cultural schemas are not restricted to a single domain of social life but achieve “a degree of generality and transferability across a variety of somewhat disparate social
adaptations” (Ortner 1989:60). Thus, the American cultural scenario “work hard, and you can become president” outlines a
course of action extrapolated to other domains—“study hard, and
you can get into Harvard,” “practice the violin, and you can play
Carnegie Hall,” or “work on your jump shot and you can make
the NBA.” The reason we can generalize a cultural scenario is because it illuminates recurrent contradictions in American society
(e.g., all citizens have equal rights but unequal opportunities, or
all people are created equal, but some are more accomplished than
others). Cultural schemas are durable because “they depict actors
responding to, and resolving (from their point of view), the central contradictions of the culture” (Ortner 1989:61).
Perhaps all societies contain such contradictions, and Ortner
discusses several contradictions in Sherpa society that are resolved by appeals to key scenarios. For example, Ortner examines the intersection of the problem of egalitarianism and
hierarchy and the social efficacy of symbolic schemes. For the
Sherpa, egalitarianism is problematic because equality among
males is viewed as natural and desirable, yet hierarchy is seen as
equally inevitable and favorable (Ortner 1989:19). These two opposed dimensions “constantly destabilize one another, making
equality fragile and subject to hierarchical manipulation . . . and
making hierarchy weak and subject to challenge” (Ortner
1989:125). In traditional Sherpa society, brothers are equals and
should inherit family lands equally, yet there is “natural” hierarchy in which older brothers have greater authority and higher
status over younger brothers. This internal contradiction has
pragmatic consequences as the Sherpa population exceeded the
carrying capacity of arable land and some brothers inherit farmland while others do not. Fraternal equality and hierarchy are in
conflict in Sherpa culture. This inherent conflict is explained by
reference to key scenarios, as encoded in legends, oral histories,
and vocabularies that deal with competition, hierarchy, and inequality (Ortner 1989:32–35). These key scenarios do not eliminate this central contradiction in Sherpa society—any more than
the key scenario “in America anyone can grow up and become
president” has resulted in a nonwhite, non-Christian, or female
president. Rather, humans weave various key scenarios into
larger social discourses and practices. Ortner writes,
The general contradiction, and its specific variants within specific relational contexts, are at once reflected in, mediated by,
and constituted through meaningful cultural forms. . . . The
contradictions and the schema together constitute a hegemony,
a mutually sustaining universe of social experience and symbolic representation through which Sherpa actors would tend
to understand themselves, their relationships, and their historical circumstances. (1989:125)
Ortner concludes with a theory of practice, one that builds
from her early discussion of key scenarios and is also indebted to
Bourdieu’s concepts of praxis and habitus (see chapter 23). What
gives a society its distinctiveness and coherence is the repertoire
of key scenarios available to people to explain their lives, their actions, and their cosmos. Such scenarios are culturally and historically contingent (the scenario “in America anyone can grow up
to become president” made no sense before 1790 when the U.S.
Constitution was ratified), and they are clearly not universal.
Even when the thematics of a key scenario appear universal—the
distinctions between nature/culture or female/male—the scenarios are nevertheless rooted in specific social experiences. Neither are key scenarios invariant cultural codes that individuals
perform. Key scenarios may be internally inconsistent or a given
key scenario may be contradicted by another key scenario. Most
importantly, key scenarios are not invariant codes because they
are employed by social actors who—sometimes in a calculated
fashion, other times unthinkingly—may emphasize some cultural schemes, downplay others, or actively modify the key scenarios. This entire dynamic realm comprises practice. Ortner
writes,
A theory of practice is a theory of history. It is a theory of how
social beings, with their diverse motives and their diverse intentions, make and transform the world in which they live. It is a
theory for answering the simplest-seeming, and yet largest,
questions that social science seeks to answer: Why does a given
society have a particular form at a particular moment—that
form and not some other? And how do people whose very
selves are part of that social form nonetheless sometimes transform themselves and their society? It is a theory that allows social and cultural analysts to put all their various methodological
tools to work—ethnographic and historical research; structural,
interpretive, and “objectivist” analytic approaches—in ways
that enhance and enrich the effectiveness of each. (1989:193)