1 anthropology religion, magic and popular culture [email protected] san besso, val...
TRANSCRIPT
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ANTHROPOLGY: WHAT’S THE APPEAL?
obvious problems for historians with the anthropological approach PARTICIPANT
OBSERVATION SCALE FUNCTIONALISM AND THE
DENIAL OF CONFLICT STRUCTURAL
FUNCTIONALISM AND THE DENIAL OF CHANGE
Eg Pitt-Rivers, The People of the Sierra, and ‘Honour and Shame’.
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
L.P. Hartley The Go-Between (1953)
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“... one thing seems clear to everyone who returns from field work. Other people are other. They do not think the way we do.”Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (1984)
Misunderstandings on First Contact
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First contact between Europeans and indigenous peoples involves two groups using their pre-existing cultural models to comprehend an unprecedented situation.For example: the Strickland-Purari Patrol led by ‘outside man’ Jack Hides across the southern Papuan Highlands in 1935.
Magic as an example of cultural misunderstanding
“The hammerers of Witches built up their systematic mythology of Satan’s kingdom and Satan’s accomplices out of the mental rubbish of peasant credulity and feminine hysteria.”Hugh Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze (1969)
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1971
(1966)1983 trans.
Popular culture and cross dressing
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Popular Culture and ‘Clues’: Why do rioters dress up as women?
Carnival as precursor to, and model for, rebellion in C16 Lyon (Natalie Zemon Davis) and C16 Romans (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie)
‘General Ludd’ (England, 1812) ‘White Boys’ (C18 Ireland) ‘Demoiselles’ of the Ariège
(1830s France) ‘Rebecca’s Daughters’ (1840s
South Wales) ‘Scotch Cattle’ (C19 Wales and
US mining districts) Molly Maguires’ (C19 Ireland
and US mining districts)
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Crime, ‘local knowledge’ and ‘Seeing like a State’
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Insurgent history; ‘history from below’: bandits, partisans, rebels, streetfighters
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Understandings from action: Robert Hertz at San Besso (1912). religion is what people do
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THE APPEAL OF HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Emphasis on Difference‘The Other is Other’Explore misunderstandings to achieve an awareness of deep differences between periodsSymbols as Sources•All behaviour, gesture, dress, visual or material representation becomes sources for historians•Massively expands the available sources, especially for poor, marginal, excluded, dominated•Cultural history (not history of structures, institutions… but what people doEmphasis on the Individual and the CommunityLocal knowledgeOral HistoryHumanist historyRejection of top-down social engineering projects of the postwar eraRejection of ‘Whiggish’ histories of constant progressFailure of the Soviet Union (established Left) in 1968View from the MarginsHistory of the excluded (overlap with Women’s liberation, Gay liberation, Civil Rights)The democratisation of the universityInsurgent HistoryEmphasis on actionCultures of resistanceAssociation with activism