for it to work. Barth objects, as we do, to the importation of frames that are
the product of extraneous concerns other than the immediate case materi-
als to hand, although we must add that Asad’s viewpoint enhanced the
understanding of inequality in the Pathan social structure. Third, and
perhaps most fundamentally, Barth has throughout his life stressed the
importance of identifyingprocessesandpatterns. Processes are generative;
they underlie patterns. Process is an analytical, not a descriptive, category.
How do we read back from patterns to processes, then? That is where a
mindful approach is required. In looking at Pathan politics, it is clear that
patterns of gender-based honor and masculinity are at play. The processes
that these patterns lead into invite comparisons with other areas that can
reveal analytical continuities. Barth’s own‘generative approach’, which he
developed in his“Models of Social Organization”implies that by starting
with a few fundamental features of a social situation we can generate ways
of understanding how complex outcomes of choices emerge. The problem,
again, has been to know how many intermediate factors have to be adduced
to arrive at such outcomes.
There is a fourth consideration that brings religion into focus, just as
thefirst point about‘Saints’did. Akbar Ahmed criticized Barth’swork
by arguing that it misses out the factors he calls ‘millennium’ and
‘charisma’. Charismatic leaders emerge who can generate new support
for themselves by envisioning ideal patterns of change. If this is correct,
it goes far to explaining the emergence of groups such as the Taliban in
the region. Ahmed implies that Barth’sanalysisissecularistandrationa-
listic in its orientation, and hence is unable to comprehend dimensions
of action that fall outside the scope of his models. This kind of point
obviouslyappliesmorestronglytoday when there are endless debates
about the working of links between religious ideologies and violent
actions, most notably in relation to the rise of severe conflicts in places
such as Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan/Afghanistan, but also parts of Africa
and the Philippines.
It is therefore particularly interesting that Barth’s own roving mentality
brought him much later to tackle the problem of understanding religion
and ritual in a remote part of the world among the 183 Baktaman people
of the Mountain Ok region in Papua New Guinea. While the bulk of his
analyses in other areas remained concerned with ecology, economy, and
balances between these factors in achieving social equilibrium, in the
Baktaman study he became absorbed with questions of meaning and the
articulation of knowledge.
26 BREAKING THE FRAMES