William Roseberry
Anthropologies and histories:
Essays in culture, history and political economy (1989)
What is political economy?
In Marxist theory, the study of the interrelation between the economic process
and the political system and political action.
Main points:
 Showing the relationships between the anthropological approaches and
their understanding of history
("variety of approaches appropriating variety of histories" p.5)
 Culture and meaning are at the heart of anthropological inquiry.
 We have to pay more attention to
- cultural differentiation,
- social and political inequalities which form people's understanding of
the world and themselves,
- to the historical formation of anthropological subjects
Roseberry's elaboration on Geertz
 Geertz's understanding of history is inspired by neo-Kantian distinction
between natural and historical sciences
 History cannot be understood by means of theoretical formulas or by
reference to general laws
 Symbols are historically derived, they are results of creative human
capacity.
 Anthropologists should interpret the meanings humans assign to their
actions.
 History and culture are interrelated (culturally situatedness)
 Sees history as cultural pattern
M. Sahlins
Culture and Practical Reason (1976)
 Equates history and culture
 Less interested in meaning or action
 Concerned with conceptual scheme
 (HD: He was an evolutionist turned structuralist)
 Stresses the opposition between a conceptual scheme and praxis
 but conceptual scheme is both prior to activity and a mediator of
activity
 i.e. Culture is the conceptual scheme (it is not the product of past
activity).
 His solution to problem of change:
more attention on the interaction
 Conceptual scheme informs practice and practice transforms the
conceptual scheme
Geertz
Not what people did but the patterns of cumulative activity
Sahlins
not practices of differently situated and positioned actors but practice as
theoretical category
"culture is enacted not acted"
E. Wolf
History
is a material social process,
it is uneven(economic and political inequality domination)
it is about transformations of cultural terms
it is about transformations of entire social orders
We cannot have analytical boundaries around particular areas.
Differences between the approaches
The main issue is the different vision of the "Other"
 Other different and separate (product of its own history and carrying its
own historicity)
We should understand the meaning or structure

Other different and connected
No culture with its own structure and history
Seduction of anthropology
Roseberry gives us feeling of the intellectual environment Greetz gained his
prominence
Post-Boas, Harris's cultural materialism, lack of interest in meaning
 Concept of culture as socially constituted and constituting







Deep play (irrational participation)
Cockfight is a simulation of the social matrix (status blood bath)
It is about status hierarchy
It is a site of sexual differentiation and seclusion
Cockfight symbolizes resistance against colonial power
therefore related to political process of state formation
The cockfight has gone through a process of creation and cannot be
separated form Balinese history
 To see culture as an ensemble of texts is to remove it from the process
of its creation
Cultural creation
 social and cultural differentiation
 culture as a material social process
 culture should not be treated as a product but production
Marxism and culture
rejects explanatory science and general laws
Regards ideas as social products and understands social life as objective
Interested in contextualizing public symbols and meanings in terms of differential
access to political and economic power
Eric Wolf Europe and People Without History (1982)
Main point:
is to stress interconnectedness of the world, see it as a totality
Disassembling the totality tantamounts distortion of reality
E.g. naming through concepts
We recognize the connections but mainly in relation to today
HD: Look at the labels of your clothes
What about the distant past
Movement of goods and peoples
Archeological findings which support these
Why do we then insist on disconnecting.
Is it through the creation of a unit called the West?
Naming and implications of it
Mid 19th century specialization of disciplines
Ideological reasons for split became justification for the specialties themselves
(Remember Cohn's point about academic relations)
Emergence of sociology
relationship between science of society and current social disintegration
Assumptions
 Individuals enter into relationships. The realm of the social
 Social order depends on the growth and extension of social relations.
Correlation between density and orderliness. Polarization increases if ties
are weak.
 Strong ties are sign of common beliefs. Moral consensus helps to
strengthen social ties
 Social relations and shared customs create a sense of society as a
totality. Social relations constitute society, in turn cohesion, then
predictability and stable internal structure.
Postulations thereof
social relations are autonomous
casual (stripped from their economic, political, or ideological context)
interactions between individuals become the prime cause of social life
distraction form the consideration of economics, politics or ideology