Test Case 4: Aesthetics
Our notions of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’ have undergone several transformations in recent years. When we apply such ideas to the products of indigenous craftsmen (e.g. those studied by Gell or Scoditti on the island of Kitawa) we are liable to misrepresent their original aims and criteria which may relate to ‘efficacy’ rather than (just) to ‘beauty’ or ‘felicity’. The divergences in musical appreciation across the world tell a similar story where links to notions of morality are common. The ambitious correlation of artistic objects with underlying ontologies proposed by Descola underlines the difficulty of cross-cultural generalizations in this domain, though that is not to claim that we are quite at a loss to arrive at any understanding of others’ experience.