Book review: Inuit Morality Play: the Emotional Education of a Three-year-old.
«I am not Chubby Maata. I did not have her accumulated store of thoughts and feelings with which to meet events, react to them, create them, and build on them. And not only did I not have Chubby Maata’s thoughts and feelings, I had a great many of my own, which certainly interfered with my perceiving hers accurately». (1998:17)
The book «Inuit Morality Play: The emotional education of a three-year-old» (1998) is written by psychological anthropologist and professor of the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Jean L. Briggs. The reason for the quote above is to draw attention to Rudolf Arnheim’s argument (1969) and what I believe underpins…show more content… Although Briggs recognise that the use of «the individual» makes complex diversity somehow more manageable, she wants to emphasize what is lost and greatly reduced by using such a strategy. Briggs argues, therefore, that «it is not the individual that creates meanings; it is individuals who do so. And to understand what a life means to the person living it, we must be able to observe the process through which the person conceives and creates the life: its purposes and goals, dangers and desires, fears and loves». (1998:2) Briggs goes about this by observing the moment-to-moment interactions in the life of the little girl, Chubby Maata, as she tries to make sense of the world around her. What Briggs reveals through her analysis is that the process of creating meaning is a very personal one. By focusing particularly on how meaning is created, the very core of how culture is transmitted is questioned, and it suggests that cultural meanings depend on emotionally experiencing oneself as an actor in one’s world, rather than assumptions of rules and habits. Briggs aim to show through Chubby Maata, the possible to see the bits and pieces that underpin the psychodynamic Inuit culture, arguing that these findings might resemble cultures…show more content… She has developed a method to recognize these particular interactions in two ways: firstly, the consequences and questions proposed in these interactions differ from those interactions considered to be serious ones. Secondly, certain actions and behaviours that are allowed in these interactions would not be deemed appropriate in the context of serious interactions. This approach serves to identify what drives Inuit behaviour in the particular areas Briggs investigated. What Briggs identifies, is the potential of diversity of understanding that individuals hold within one
