Reading :: Culture and Inference

Culture and Inference: A Trobriand Case Study
By Edwin Hutchins

"This book is an attempt to make culture the object rather than the instrument of analysis" (p.128). This sentence, at the very end of Hutchins' 1980 book, sums up his project. As he explains, "More of our knowledge of the world than we probably realize is arrived at through inference" (p.119), and much of that inference runs through our cultural understanding. 

Hutchins is interested here in cognition in field settings. The examples are taken from his naturalistic observation in the Trobriand Islands, specifically legal disputes over land. Although he observed and analyzed several such disputes, for illustration purposes, he zeroes in on one specific dispute and examines the arguments and evidence used by each claimant as well as how these were received by the court. The Trobriand land tenure system is complex, so Hutchins has to cover quite a bit of ground to get here. But it's well worth getting through because it gives us a better job of how inference works.

I'll quickly note that Hutchins cites Luria's Uzbek expedition in Chapter 1 (pp.8-9), focusing on how Luria presented syllogisms.

The book is brief, but probably merits more than this short review. If you're interested in cross-cultural cognition research, definitely pick it up!