Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions

The Geography of Tlingit Character

the geography of tlingit character Thomas F. Thornton Studies of place and personhood represent old and venerable domains of inquiry in both the humanities and the social sciences, and recently each has undergone somewhat of a renaissance. The philosopher Aristotle in his Physics observed, ‘‘The power of place will be remarkable,’’ and characterized it as ‘‘the first of all things,’’ an indispensable aspect of every substance , and a ‘‘vessel’’ or container that frames and holds things—perceptions , memories, feelings, and so on. Aristotle’s theory of the primordiality of place has been expanded by phenomenologists, such as Heidegger (1962, 1977), Casey (1993, 1997) and Abram (1996), who have explored perceptual aspects of sensing place. Similarly, humanistic geographers (e.g., Tuan 1974, 1977; Relph 1976; Agnew and Duncan 1989), noting the shortcomings of purely quantitative and positivist analyses of specific environments, have charted a more experientialist approach to the study of place. In sociology this new interest in place prompted E. V. Walter (1988:215) to launch an ambitious new subfield called topistics, which he defines as ‘‘A holistic mode of inquiry designed to make the identity, character, and experience of place intelligible.’’ Postmodern studies have underscored the importance of recognizing multiplicities of location and place in cultural analyses and the important connections between space, power, and knowledge in human societies (cf. Rodman 1992; Gregory 1994; Gupta and Ferguson 1997; Escobar 2001). At the same time, ethnogeographically inclined anthropologists (e.g., Basso 1984, 1988, 1996; Cruikshank 1981, 1990; Feld and Basso 1996; Hunn 1994, 1996) have rekindled a theoretical interest, largely dormant since the Boasian era, in place making and place naming and their cognitive and social dimensions (see Thornton 1997a), as well as in landscape (e.g., Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995). In Northwest Coast ethnology, perhaps more so than other culture areas, the interest in place has persisted in large measure due to the influence of students of Boas, such as de Laguna (1960, 1972), who continued work on the Northwest Coast with an attentive eye toward the human meanings of landscape, and more recent researchers who have taken up issues of place and identity (e.g., Thornton 1997b, 2000; Harkin 2000). The studyof personhood and character has followed a similar trajectory in anthropological research. After peaking with the heyday of the cultural and personality school in the 1930s to 1950s, which drew heavily on Northwest Coast ethnology (e.g., Benedict 1934), interest in the study of personhood has recently been revived under the new ethnopsychology (e.g., Kan 1989c) and ethnography on identity. A key linking figure between the two movements is Hallowell (1955), who recognized that personhood is a cultural construction with significant variation across societies but showed that this diversity is undergirded by certain universal concepts, such as the idea of ‘‘the self.’’ Similarly, anthropological studies of character proliferated as part of the culture and personality movement (e.g., Olson 1956), especially during the World War II era, when numerous national character studies were produced. But these have since fallen out of favor due to the nature of their assumptions , methods, and essentializing tendencies. Today, the study of character receives scant attention within anthropology or the broader social sciences, although a recent book by psychologist James Hillman (1999), The Force of Character, and the Lasting Life, sheds important new light on the unique and developmental qualities of character. Hillman argues that character is more than a set of traits to be identified or instilled; rather, it is a process of selfrealization embodying a unique constellation of characteristics or traits that become more clearly inscribed (to use a term etymologically linked to character ) on the individual and thus perceptible as lasting and defining images, only with age and experience. Thus character requires ‘‘additional years’’ and the important physiological and psychological changes that come with aging, in order to be fulfilled. Hillman’s emphasis on the individuality of character offers an important corrective to more totalizing national character studies that tended to portray character as a reflection of dominant personality traits, which, in turn, were molded in cookie cutter–like fashion by certain cultural institutions or enculturation practices. Hillman (1999:197) argues, ‘‘Unlike ‘personality ,’ character is impersonal. Rocks, paintings, houses, even kinds of 364 thornton bacteria and logical propositions demonstrate character. The discourse of personality is human psychology; of character, imaginative description.’’ To the extent that...