the individual. Other definitions incorporate the social and so obviate his
general argument.
In his contribution to the volume Christopher Taylor ( 2005 ) takes up
another aspect of the debate. He notes the rejection of culture as a
monolithic explanation of things, going on to say that culture has tended
to be replaced by power as the explanation of everything and the desire for
power as the prime mover of human motivation: certainly both a reduc-
tion in Kapferer’s terms and a reification, as Taylor points out, with the
accompanying proposition that the desire to maximize power underlies all
human action. (At the risk of turning a general argument into a particular
one, we suggest on the basis of long-term participantfieldwork in aca-
demic departments of anthropology that the proposition doesfit well
enough the behavior of many Chairs of Departments in Universities,
who tend to justify their actions by arguing that they are doing everything
‘for the good of the whole’.) Taylor contests the universality of this model
of individual power maximization and offers in support of his view a brief
reference to the traditional power of the King in Rwanda, which was based
on the royal ability to conform successfully to a cosmological scheme in
which his body and person ritually facilitatedflows of fertility for the
community or society which he served. The king’s cosmological power
was not his individually. It was a collective ideal that he had to live up to.
The Rwandan kingship here stands in for the cosmos, and cosmos for
culture. Individuals might be found wanting in relation to this collective
(social) ideal. Power, therefore, may be individual or collective. It is not
one thing. Indeed, we may observe, it is not a thing at all but a process of
becoming and waxing/waning. So, for Taylor, cosmology stands in for
both the cultural and the social realms. Cosmology provides a signature of
holism on social processes.
Taylor’s aim here is like that of many other contributors to this book, to
bring society back into the picture. One of the most accessible studies in
the collection is by Roger Just ( 2005 ). Just carefully lays out a scaffolding
of arguments. He notes that the concept of‘the individual’has come to
the forefront of analysis, and in its universalizing form is linked to the old
idea of the psychic unity of mankind (Just, p. 59), as well as to a kind of
shift away from the emphasis on the collective. As Just notes (p. 62), the
consequence is that“anthropology’s problem is now what to do with
society and culture”.
What, indeed? Just further notes that evolutionary psychology obviates
this problem by jumping to the putative universal individual. Another
6 RETREAT OF THE SOCIAL? WHERE TO? 57