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Anthropology, History and Personal Narratives: Reflections on Writing ‘African Voices, African Lives’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Pat Caplan
Pat Caplan
Affiliation:
The University of Sussex
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Extract

Almost half a century ago, the famous British anthropologist Evans-Pritchard suggested that anthropology is actually a form of historiography, thus initiating a debate about the relationship between the two disciplines which has continued sporadically ever since. His statement was a reaction to the claims of Radcliffe-Brown, a founding ‘father’ of British social anthropology, that social anthropology was a kind of science, whereas Evans-Pritchard sought to claim it for the humanities.

Type
Oral History, Memory and Written Tradition
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 9 , December 1999 , pp. 283 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1999

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References

1 Cohn, Bernard, 1980. ‘History and Anthropology: the State of Play’, in Comparative History and Society vol. 22Google Scholar.

2 Evans-Pritchard, E., 1950. ‘Social Anthropology: past and present’, Man, 198Google Scholar; 1961, ‘Anthropology and History’, Simon Lecture delivered at Manchester University: Man-chester University Press. Reprinted in 1962 in Essays in Social Anthropology, London.

3 Radcliffe-Brown, R., 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society London, Cohen and WestGoogle Scholar.

4 Lewis, I. (ed.), 1965. History and Social Anthropology, ASA Monograph 7. London: Tavistock PublicationsGoogle Scholar.

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9 Wolf, E., 1982. Europe and the People without History. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los AngelesGoogle Scholar.

10 Hastrup, , ‘Introduction’, p. 3Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 7.

12 Ibid., p. 9. Blok, A., ‘Reflections on “making history”’, in Hastrup, K. (ed.), 1922 (see fn. 6)Google Scholar.

13 Guha, R. (ed.), 1982. Subaltern Studies vol. I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar (this volume has been followed by numerous others in the same series).

14 In my own thinking on the topic, I have been influenced by a number of historians, including Alan Macfarlane, a historian turned anthropologist, who, in the 1970s, published the diary of a seventeenth-century clergyman, which he subtitled ‘An Essay in Historical Anthropology’ (Macfarlane, A., 1970. The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: a Seventeenth Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology, Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar); later he wrote a study of witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England which drew heavily upon anthropological studies of witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa to make sense of happenings in Essex several centuries ago (Macfarlane, A., 1976. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: a Regional and Comparative Study, LondonGoogle Scholar).

15 Ginzburg, C., 1980. The Cheese and the Worms: the Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (London and Henley, 1978)Google Scholar. Spence, JonathanThe Death of Woman Wang: Rural Life in China in the 17th Century (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Ladurie, E. Le Roy, 1980 [1978]. Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294–1324 PenguinGoogle Scholar; Ladurie, E. Le Roy, 1987 [1983]. Jasmin's Witch: an Investigation into Witchcraft and Magic in South-West France during the Seventeenth Century. Penguin BooksGoogle Scholar.

16 See, for example, Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., 1987. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850, London, HutchinsonGoogle Scholar.

17 Marks, S. (ed.), 1987. Not Either an Experimental Doll: the Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (London)Google Scholar; Marks, S., 1989, ‘The context of a personal narrative: reflections on “Not Either an Experimenal Doll”’, in Personal Narratives Group (eds), Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives, Bloomington: Indiana University PressGoogle Scholar.

18 Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (eds), 1986. Writing Culture: the Politics and Poetics of Ethnography (Berkeley, University of California Press)Google Scholar; for a critical view, see Scholte, B., ‘The Literary Turn in Contemporary Anthropology’, Critique of Anthropology, 7, 1: 33–47Google Scholar.

19 Geertz, C., 1975. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London)Google Scholar.

20 For some varying views of the anthropologist's role in the field, see Crapanzano, V., 1980. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan (University of Chicago Press)Google Scholar; Myerhoff, B., 1979. Number Our Days (New York)Google Scholar.

21 See Shostak, M., 1983 [1981]. Nisa: the Life and Words ofa !Kung Woman (Harmondsworth)Google Scholar.

23 See, for example, Dwyer, K., 1982. Moroccan Dialogue: Anthropology in Question (Baltimore and London)Google Scholar.

23 Some have used footnotes (Smith, M., Baba of Kan, New Haven, CTGoogle Scholar; Strobel, M., 1989. Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya (Bloomington, IN)Google Scholar); others have placed their explanations at the beginning of each chapter (e.g. Shostak (see fn.21)).

24 Many writers of personal narratives have eliminated their own voices altogether, e.g. Burgos-Debray, E., 1984. I, Rigoberta Menchu: an Indian Woman in Guatemala (London)Google Scholar or M. Shostak – see fn. 21).

25 Compare the relatively unemotional life histories of Strobel (see fn. 24) with the emotionally charged one of Shostak (see fn. 21).

26 Ranger, T., 1975. Dance and Society in Eastern Africa 1890–1970 (London)Google Scholar.