Iara Cury
Elizabeth Ewart
Week 1: 19/01/2011
Anthropology and History: Twins, But Not Identical
With its quite immodest name—the study of man—anthropology has carved for itself an
all-encompassing niche, and such time and place where people have existed and lived,
anthropology may claim it as its rightful, if not exclusive, domain. It is clear that nothing can
keep anthropologists from wondering about the origins and evolution of human society
and culture, just like nothing could keep them from investigating the farthest, most isolated
and “exotic” groups of people on Earth. At the same time, social anthropology has built its
reputation on the unpretentious method of ethnography, commonly focusing on local
communities for its study of social organization and culture. Still, “limitations of time and
energy” constrain the anthropological fieldworker to limited observation, unintentionally
creating a “microcosm” out of its particular methods (Wolf, 1982, p.15). Fortunately,
History and Anthropology1 seem to be developing an especially constructive relationship to
the extent that anthropologists have begun to draw from the wealth of information
available in historical archives and to answer time-sensitive questions that have hitherto
gone unanswered. But before making the case for the potential uses of the discipline of
History in Social Anthropology, it will be useful to establish the need for the study of
humanity through work and interdisciplinary collaboration beyond the possibilities of
localized fieldwork.
Through their study of humanity, anthropologists have come to recognize the existence of
certain social structures, like modes of production and kinship, social processes, like
material accumulation and migration, and concepts like power, agency and ritual. But to
understand an object of study, whatever it may be, is to understand its processes of
formation and transformation (Bloch, 1986, p.194) as well as its functions and meaning.
Furthermore, as Wolf argues in the introduction to his book, structures, processes and
concepts are names we assign to quite fluid relationships and “relationship among sets of
relationships” (1982, p.6). Much of anthropology entails a study over time of the flux of
people, ideas and objects and resources around one or several different places—a study of
how the unbounded ecological, economic, political, social and cultural elements of society
affect each other over time. Simply put, anthropologists navigate everywhere between the
microcosm of the individual and the macro levels of entire societies and global networks of
people; not surprisingly, the timescale of studies matter as much as the complexity and
subtlety of their subjects.
Fundamentally, many anthropologists are interested in discovering or developing
explanatory social theories about the world, which revolve around the linkage of causes
and effects. Precisely because of this, Wolf states that we cannot hope to understand the
present world without carefully tracing its development through history, producing
History and Anthropology will be capitalized to denote the respective disciplines, as opposed to history as a
sequence of events over time.
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theories about this development, and matching such theories and history to changes and
effects at the micro level (1982, p.21). Social theorizing is what demands the most rigorous
and nuanced accounting of events, processes and connections, and in reality, many
significant social changes were not recognized and understood until “placed in the crucible
of history” (Evans-Pritchard, 1962, p.56). Perhaps on this empirical reality lies the
popularity of historical materialism, leading the social sciences to forever engage in “one
long dialogue with the ghost of Marx” (Wolf, 1982, p.20). In particular, anthropologists
continue to tackle the intimate but ambiguous connection between a society’s mode of
production, power structure, ideology, and more generally, culture, that can only be
clarified through historical analyses.
By means of his historical study of the Merina circumcision ritual, From Blessing to
Violence, Maurice Bloch demonstrates the importance of connecting the anthropological
interpretation of a social phenomenon to its historical life. He critiques the usual dichotomy
within anthropology between symbolist and functionalist treatments of ritual, proposing
that determining how a specific ritual changes over time, both in practice and cosmology, is
the true revelation of its functions and meanings. In the case of the circumcision ritual,
while no process of formation can be determined, a process of transformation can be
derived from historical records and politico-economic contextualization (1986, p.183).
Having a configuration of hierarchy yet vaguely sketching a cosmological order, the ritual
has been able to continually adapt to social change while maintaining stability of meaning.
Where “dominators” and “dominated” interact in pre-determined ways, Bloch’s perceptive
interpretation is that the play reinforces existing power structures while providing feelings
of belonging and even satisfaction to participants (p.191-2). His conclusion could not be
reachable outside the timescale of a historical study, which delicately impugns the
explanatory failure of previous theories about ritual on their extreme ethnographic focus.
Having settled the ultimate importance of studying social subjects and concepts over time,
it remains for us to recognize how history plays a part in contributing to the work and
knowledge of the anthropologist. One of the vast subjects connecting Anthropology to
History is the complex and controversial historical relationship between Western and nonWestern societies. Evolving from the “civilized” versus “uncivilized” colonial discourse to
the “oppressor” versus “oppressed” post-colonial discourse to more recent discussions
about agency, subaltern resistance, and emic hybridization, the historical recognition of
non-Western peoples’ histories and influence on Western civilization has gained a strong
foothold in the anthropological understanding of the world. Claude Levi-Strauss, in the
book chapter “Race and History”, discusses processes of change in terms of how one group
of people will synthetize many social, cultural and technological innovations over time,
from sources both within and (frequently) outside the group. This interpretation of
“progress” as a probabilistic and cumulative gamble devolves much credit to the rest of the
world, and in Levi-Strauss’ view, obliges the conscientious embracing of human diversity
(1973, p.361-2).
Wolf, in Europe and the People Without History, makes the argument that the West evolved
in the tightest interconnection with non-Western peoples and geographies, whose societies
were as dynamic as any other supposed “civilized” ones. If the history of the
accomplishments and struggles of “uncivilized” peoples is missing, it is due to the biased or
myopic perspective of past social scientists and historians (1982, p. x). In a similar vein,
Marshall Sahlins’ article, “Cosmologies of Capitalism”, critiques the patronizing opinion that
non-Western have valiantly resisted but capitulated to the forces of Western cultural and
economic hegemony (1994, p.413). His historical examples of 18th and 19th century
imperial China, Hawaii and Northwestern America demonstrate that local populations
were (and presumably still are) actively incorporating goods and ideas into their local
social contexts for their own purposes. Based on events and societies washed away by the
sands of time, hidden under the biased records of established history, few of these
conclusions could be drawn purely from ethnographic fieldwork and without careful
archival work.
Yet History as a discipline has evolved as much as anthropology over the last century, and
though the discourse of long timescale historical projects is promising, the practice of
History is as challenging as the practice of Anthropology. Evans-Pritchard, in his essay,
“Anthropology and History”, points out that despite similarities in method and subject
matter, History may be bound to the study of the public sphere, of political and economic
affairs, and of dominant perspectives. Anthropology, by virtue of its personal encounters
with informants, is obliged to answer more intimate questions about the domestic, familial
and marginal spheres (Evans-Pritchard, 1962, p.59). This bias is also reflected in the fact
that History has “historically” focused on documents produced by “official” or sociallydominant sources such as colonial officials, missionaries, and traders; oral narratives and
“unofficial” documents, for their part, have gone unrecorded or ignored based on their
“questionable” validity.
Through historiography and the self-reflexivity elicited by the postmodern current of past
decades, both History and Anthropology have come to look at themselves with a critical
eye. Can History be objective? Do multiple histories exist through multiple perspectives?
Does that lead the scholar to relativism? On Anthropology’s side, what is the meaning of
cultural continuity and change? Whenever anthropologists turn to the archives in search of
historical information, they must bear all of these questions in mind and to recognize the
limits of past and present written records. In fact, perhaps one of History’s greatest
contributions to Anthropology is on the history of Anthropology itself (Evans-Pritchard,
1962, p.57). Forcing anthropologists to face the evolution of their own subject—with its
transitions from armchair study to functionalism, structuralism and all subsequent “isms”,
History is the permanent reminder of the fluidity of ideas and theories about the world. For
example, what was (is) the connection between anthropologists and (neo)colonialism? A
discipline is always a product of its time; in its permanent struggle against ethnocentrism
and evolutionism, and even academic “imperialism”, the longstanding lesson is that the
anthropologist must thread forward with constant care.
Useful as History may be to Anthropology, however, an essay about the major role of
history in the study of humanity runs the risk of overshadowing one of Anthropology’s
strengths—its perspective on human agency and its focus on lived experience. Even though
participant observation maybe not bring to the fore all of the relevant facts, historical
relationships and geographical networks, it is an indispensable half (or likely much more
than half) of the work of understanding people, society and culture. Taking anything less
than a long and hard gaze at the individual and his social and physical environment is to
risk neglecting the depth and complexity of human experience and to risk assuming, in
some form or another, a determinist view of social life. In its reconstruction of history,
History the Discipline may benefit from resisting a tendency towards dominant-biased,
teleological impressions; in its reconstruction of history, Anthropology the Discipline must
endeavor to illuminate the dynamics between real personal choice and social
determination. On such an understanding depend our actions and motivations in everyday,
microscopic life.
Bibliography
Bloch, M. 1986. From Blessing to Violence Cambridge: CUP.
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1962. ‘Anthropology and History’ in Social Anthropology and other
essays London: Faber and Faber.
Levi-Strauss, C. 1973. ‘Race and History’ in Structural Anthropology Vol2 London: Penguin
Books.
Sahlins, M. 1994. Cosmologies of Capitalism: the trans-pacific sector of “the world system”.
In Dirks, N., G. Eley & S. Ortner (eds) Culture/power/history: a reader in
contemporary social theory Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wolf, E. R. 1982. Europe and the people without history : with a new preface. Berkeley ;
London, University of California Press.