Approaches

Development of anthropology of religion

Pre-enlightenment: practice and belief were fused, belief wasn't private or internal in the modern sense.

Enlightenment: religion framed as private belief.

Religion initially regarded as functional; maintained social cohesion, morality, or psychological comfort. Sir James Frazer failed to use cultural relativism and imposed his own opinions. E.B Tylor less dismissive of unfamiliar belief systems but offered a narrow definition of religion. Emile Durkheim recognised that religion was also a set of practices and social institutions that brought people together. Geertz moves beyond the functional explanations which he correlates with the reductionism of subordinating either the social to the cultural or vice versa. Now religion is studies in globalised, post-colonial contexts.

Issues with the study of religion (5)

- Geertz definition: 'a system of symbols that establishes powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people' (broad)

- E. B. Tylor: 'belief in supernatural things', so Santa Claus?

- Edmund Leach - 'there is the widest possible disagreement as to how the word ritual should be understood'

- How to define religion, ritual, and myth

- Who speaks for a religion?

Define Religion

Set of rituals rationalised by myth, mobilising superhuman powers for the purpose of achieving, or preventing, transformations of state in man and nature

Define ritual

Any repetitive and patterned behaviour that is tied to a religious institution, belief, or custom

Define myth

Symbolic stories that express a spiritual truth or a basic belief about a certain religion

Karl Marx (S - 1844) on religion

'opiate of the masses' distorts reality and numbs the pain of the proletariat's oppression

James Frazer (A - 1890)

armchair, used questionnaires mailed to missionaries and was quick to impose his own beliefs, lacking cultural relativism

E.B. Tylor (A - 1870s, 90s)

less dismissive of unfamiliar belief systems but narrow definition of religion as 'belief in the supernatural'

Emil Durkheim (S - 1890s)

Proponent of structural functionalism. Social science should be holistic. social solidarity: mechanical (pre-modern, similarities hold us together) and organic (modern - interdependence holds us together)

A. M. Hocart (A - 1920s)

Myth is necessary because it gives the ritual its intention

Edward Shils (S - 1950s)

Ritual and belief are intertwined but separable, as one might accept beliefs but not the rituals associated with them (OK but I'd argue that you need the rituals to express the beliefs)

Clifford Geertz (A - 1960s)

Religion is a system of symbols that helps people make sense of their lives

Natalie Davis (H - 1970s)

Religion can legitimate violece

- She interpreted mutual lynchings of Catholics and Protestants as ritual murders meant to cleanse the community of heresy.

Talal Asad (A - 1980s)

'what appears to As today to be self-evident [that anthropology has symbolic and structural functions] is in fact a view that has a specific Christian history'.

Why does Asad criticise Geertz

The Geertzian understanding of religion separates it from power and to avoid this we must 'unpack each religion into its own historical character'

Catherine Bell (Theologian - 1992)

Ritual is more than repetition of an action, its the way the action is performed and distinguished from other actions.

Anthony Wallace (A - 1990s) quote

'Ritual is religion in action, it is the cutting age of the tool'

'Myth is the theory of ritual'

'Together, they are religion'

Jack Eller (A - 2000s)

'the means by which human society and culture is extended to include the nonhuman'

Tanya Luhrman (A - 2017, when God talks back)

People have personal, human relationships with God

Ronald Hutton (H - 2010s)

Greater collaboration between Hs and As could end modern-day witchhunting.

Alan Strathern Immanentism vs Transcendentalism

Immanentism: Belief that the divine is present within our world

Transcendentalism: Divine exists beyond the physical world

Talal Asad quote on universal religion

'there clearly is not, nor can there be, such a thing as a universally acceptable account of a living tradition'

Catherine Bell quote on ritual's anchoring property

'Ritual is the bridge between tradition and constant social change'

Clifford Geertz on ritual

'in ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined turn out to be the same world'

Local in the Nanse valley about religion's structural capabilities

'There's one good thing about the Church: it civilises people. Without it we would be acting like beasts; it is a brake on society'.

Structural Functionalism - P

a conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium

- religion through communitas

Structural functionalism - E (3)

1) 10 of the 14 villages in the Nanse Valley have a strong village patron that is an image of the Virgin Mary. She has the role of the mother of the entire village and the village becomes the household of the villager. As one member put it 'she is a significant factor in binding the villagers together as members of the same family

2) Mack Holt - motivating force behind the Wars of the Religion was perception of safeguarding and defending a sacred notion of community defined by religion'. Less revolts in Ottoman empire as millet system allowed religious communities to govern their own affairs

3) Phillip II's direct assault upon Morisco's existence through the 1567 edict prohibiting them from reading, writing, or speaking in Arabic drove them to electing their own ing in the mountains and killing and torturing local Christians.

Structural functionalism - A (4)

- Belief systems not primarily about doctrine or individual faith but the function they serve in maintaining the integrity and stability of a society

- Victor Turner's communitas (stripping of social status -> liminal -> reintegration at a higher status, Emil Durkheim's collective effervescence

- When people join in a ritual they feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves

- Anthony Wallace: 'as many critics of religion have pointed out, many crimes have been committed in the name of God (Natalie Davis, people feel justified to use violence if its to protect their religion and thus their society); but even more crimes might be committed if the same people had no God' | Religion promotes stability and helps preserve the status quo

Victor Turner on ritual

3 types: exegetical (subjective), objective, and positional (how objects in the ritual relate to each other)

- Initially described ritual as the affirmation of communal unity in contrast to the friction of social life etc.

- Later realised that rituals aren't just about unity but combine both the structure (rules, order) and anti-structure (freedom, togetherness)

Emil Durkheim on structural functionalism

these rituals create discipline, cohesion, and vitalise (ensuring the values of a society are passed down), and euphoric (reminds of place in society)

Ritual as outward expression - P

Ritual is the embodiment of myth and serves as a reminder of the belief

Ritual as outward expression - E (3)

1) Catherine Bell (1992) washing your hands is not a ritual despite you doing it repeatedly and during the same circumstance. If it is performed with a particular formality and how it related to surrounding context and symbols. e.g. Practitioners wash their hands and mouths every time they enter a Shinto shrine in a special fountain called a temizuya, to purify themselves.

2) At the dedication of temples as many as 20,000 prisoners were sacrificed'. Sometimes self-sacrifice - ritualistic suicide was practised. Williard Booth 'aztec would rip open his own breast or cut his own throat'

3) 'to eat or not to eat' was the question 18thC French peasants confronted in folklore and reality; Tom Thumb, french version of H&G provides a glimpse of the Malthusian world detailing a family getting rid of their children. 236/1,000 babies died before their first birthday

Ritual as outward expression - A (6)

- Geertz - ritual helps people make sense of their lives, putting ideas into action.

- For people outside, rituals give a window into what the culture means to the people doing them, when the scholar sees how action and belief come together in a ritual, they can better understand the culture

- Edward Shils (1950s) ritual and belief are intertwined but separate, one might accept beliefs but not the rituals associated with them. (to me this makes sense but ritual helps to express the beliefs)

- Beliefs alone are abstract

- Anthony Wallace - 'ritual is religion in action, it is the cutting edge of the tool'

- In a society like this, how would its citizens, fighting for their very survival, remember to think of religion without ritual to remind them?

Personal comfort - P

Religion provides comfort and support as it offers you a personal connection with God

Personal comfort - E (4)

1) Almost all adults in the Nanse Valley hold a special relationship to one sacred figure that they feel particularly close to, it was as though the virgin would be hurt if they didn't turn up

2) Tanya Luhrmann studied 100 evangelical Christians who prayed for 30 mins a day 6 days a week for 4 weeks; reported being more present and more relaxed.

3) Tellegen Absorption Scale, (ability to imagine and become mentally absorbed in everyday activities) those who scored highest were also the ones who reported the greatest interaction with God

4) Trobriand Islanders during Kula Ring (sail from island to island exchanging gifts), many things can go wrong on the journey so the sailors use religious rituals to reduce stress

Different types of ritual - P

Rite of passage, Rites of intensification, Rites of Revitalisation, Instrumental Prayers

Different types of ritual - E (4)

1- passage) Xhosa in South Africa, teens circumcised and not allowed to react (separation), live in isolation while their wounds heal (liminal), isolated quarters are then burned and they return home with an elevated status

2- intensification) Used for communitas. Nagol land diving ceremony; men construct wooden towers, women prepare costumes

3- revitalisation) Island of Tanna used in WWII as a temporary base bringing in modern phenomena and goods. Each year on feb 15 they construct copies of U.S. Airplanes, runways, towers, and march in military formation to attract John Frum who will bring back the material wealth. 'you Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for Jesus to return to Earth, and haven't given up hope'

4- instrumental) Nanse Valley most common prayer is promesa, 'if you cure my son I will go to Covadonga barefoot', more important promises made to more distant shrines

Different types of ritual - A (3)

- Arnold Van Gennep (1909) three stages of a rite of passage: separation, liminality, incorporation

- To us the John Frum worshipping seems crazy but it makes sense to them, benefits of cultural relativism

- Transactional relationship at times, a tool for crisis management in which God is almost treated like a friend

Structure - P

Ritual and religion can reinforce power and social structures

Structure - E (3)

1) Ronald Hutton's The Witch (views witchhunting as as serious as malaria) Margery Stanton, denied milk by a family, their child died, she was trialed at Chelmsford in 1578

2) Peter Brown - 'to visit a holy man was to go where power was'. Women in Nanse Valley wear diff colours to indicate their status and purity. Wedding is last time you wear white, when widowed you 'abandon the last remnants of light'

3) David Koresh, leader of Branch Davidians, claimed to have religious insight and positioned himself as a prophet, his interpretation of scripture created a sense of urgency that justified his leadership; us gov involed in end of th world. Gov believed they were stockpiling weapons and raided the compound, fire broke out, 86 died.

Structure - A (5)

- Accusing someone of witchcraft becomes a ritualised response

- Talal Asad critical of Geertz's westernised view of religion which separates religion from power. Religion also means different things across time and space

- Social discipline in the med/EM period gradually abandons religious space letting belief, faith and consciousness take its place. This implies a shift away from institutional to individual practice, aligning with Geertz; individual interpretation of symbols

- The men interviewed say that the village doesn't notice or comment on gender dichotomy, because it is reinforced and ritual is not questioned

- Like when choosing the new Pope, ritual is designed to convey the Pope's authority over the Church. Same in secular world; presidential inaugurations involve ritual; hence why we call election winners 'president-elect' until they go through the swearing-in ceremony

Hard to define religion - P

Religion changes over time and place and has differing meanings depending on its surrounding context

Hard to define religion - E (4)

1) 8/10 people are religious, but number of those who say they have no affiliation is growing

2) Protestant Reformation promoted sola scriptura and attacked the idea that physical objects or actions could have supernatural power, weakened belief in prayers, charms, or rituals etc.

3) Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka, whoever holds the tooth of the Buddha is the one with power, tooth is treated like a king and the king is dressed like a god, showing how religion and politics were connected.

4) James Frazer's golden bough 'I look upon them not merely as false but as preposterous and absurd', cultural relativism don't impose definitions from one culture upon another

Hard to define - A (7)

- No set of vocab can completely capture the richness of the religious diversity that exists in the world today, but cultural anthropology provides the toolkit for understanding the emotional, social, and spiritual contributions that religion makes to the human experience

- Some definitions emphasise a sense of community but this is not always present in certain religions

- Many cultures don't have a word for 'religion' at alland don't make a clear distinction between beliefs or practices that are 'religious' or 'spiritual'

- Concepts like 'heaven' 'hell' 'prayer' don't exist in all societies and lack of differentiation between human and deity is not just a phenomenon of the 'primitive world' e.g. Tanya Luhrmann on US

- The fact that some societies don't separate politics and religion is a clue to how intertwined they really were

- We can view their religions in an etic sense but have to do so carefully, knowing it reflects out framework, not their self-understanding

- Some societies do not separate magic and religion. In societies with polytheistic, animistic, or shamanistic traditions, magical practices are often integrated into rituals. Egyptian magic (heka) was fundamental aspect of religious practice as the creator god used heka (magic) to form the world and the gods themselves.

Comparison between magic and religion - P

Both help to make sense of the unknown

Comparison between magic and religion - E (3)

1) Mennocio's trial records and his own writing and surrounding culture allow for a reconstruction 'what popes!, what prelates! what priests!' God once a man, world created out of cheese. While outside church doctrine, he was drawing from folk beliefs, myths, and oral traditions

2) Both are turned to in periods of crisis, Nanse Valley, women of child-bearing age make the most promesas. Similarly, witchcraft before the introduction of the New Poor law in 1601

3) 'since they themselves are not capable of fully regulating their environment, there must be other powers beyond who are capable' Nanse Valley not dissimilar to witchcraft

Comparison between religion and magic - A (6)

- Both used to explain the unknown

- Marcel Mauss (1902) religion and magic two opposite poles on a spectrum of spiritual beliefs; magic one end, private, secret, individual. Religion the other, public and oriented to bringing the community together

- Carlo Ginzburg's study of Menocchio is a good example of historians adopting the anthropological approach. Microhistory of one italian peasant, although not a 'typical' peasant, can allow us to draw wider conclusions.

- Francis Furet - the reintegration of the subordinate classes into general history can only be accomplished through 'number and anonymity', Ginzburg - if we can why wouldn't we?

- Magic and religion are Western constructs

Hs and As on religion - P

Hs and As have differing understandings of religion

Hs and As on religion - E (4)

1) Loring Danforth (A) found that ancient Greek funerals worked as a 'negative transformation of marriage ceremonies' and that the symbols used in funeral laments helped peasants to cope with their grief by metaphorically transforming death into life. 'this kind of open-ended interpretation may make the reader uneasy. Hs like to nail things down, not pry them loose'

2) Keith Thomas in religion and decline at magic examines how Protestantism and rationalism undermined magical and religious beliefs - belief systems declined over time due to broader socio-economic and cultural changes.

{3) Edward Evans-Pritchard sees it less historically when studying the Azande. Its not a stage to grow out of, witchcraft complements, rather than replaces, rational thinking, when a granary collapses and injures someone, they know that the termites caused it but they also seek to ask why it collapsed at that specific moment, with that person there.

Hs and As on religion - A (3)

- Hs: how has religion shaped society and power, how has it changed, studied through documents, struggle to understand religion in terms of beliefs and meanings, look more at causality and context and look to prove or disprove certain beliefs

- As: don't look to prove or disprove beliefs but rather look to understand them, the symbolic importance of religion and ritual in society, studies through fieldwork, observation, and lived experience

- Common understandings: cosmology provides big picture explanations for how human life was created e.g. Book of Genesis and Navajo cosmology (life began in a series of lower worlds and gradually moved upward into the present world) both serve to explain human origins and structure of the universe, answering existential questions.

How has it developed as a discipline

Anthropology has progressed from a colonial, Eurocentric discipline rooted in social evolutionism and scientific racism to a reflexive, inclusive field that embraces cultural relativism, indigenous voices, and participatory methods. Once used to categorise and control, it now seeks to understand and collaborate.

development anthropology (8)

- Herodetus conducted first ethnographic research as to why the Greeks and Persians were always fighting

- 17th and 18thC early anthropologists observing the tribes living in the Americas, and then deeming the tribes as inferior to Europeans

- 19thC began to formalise, influenced by colonial expansion and desire to understand diverse cultures.

- Early A like Lewis Henry Morgan proposed linear evolutions of society from 'savagery' to 'barbarism' to 'civilisation', notion of culturalevolutionism, all societies develop a predictable universal sequence.

- Durkheim, holistic approach to anthropology in 1890s

- 1900s, paradigm shift thanks to Franz Boas with cultural relativism + historical particularism and Bronislaw Malinowksi on immersive fieldwork

- mid-20thC, Levi-Strauss and Victor Turner functionalism and symbolic anthropology

- Late 20thC-early 21stC cultural anthropology, seen as 'high culture' in 19thC but now more as the body we exist in.

Levi Strauss on future of historical anthropology

- They are more similar than first thought, study same subjects it is more their methodologies that differ.

- A seeks to focus on unwritten customs

Shift to culture

- 'Turning to anthropology would make it possible for historians to 'uncover the strange' and distance themselves from the 'over-familiar'

- History workshops in Britian in the 1960s and 70s sought to democratise history and played a large role in the turn to social history in the 70s.

- The key starting point for historical anthropology was anthropology's turn to culture in the decades between the 1950s and 1970s; As like Geertz pointed out that all societies created forms of orientation through culture.

- Yet culture should also be seen as a practice, i.e. as a performance of a world of beliefs, rituals, and daily enactments that changed over time and place. The constant production and reproduction of culture made it impossible to fix it. It was fragmented, fluid, changeable - a contested process.

Geertz definition of culture

'system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms'

- good because it is broad and open, cultures are fluid

Issues with Anthropology

- Failed to keep up with each other

- Historians are collaborating with different disciplines

- No general agreement on what a witch is

- Historians of E have tended to let their terms be defined for them by their sources

- Sweeping conclusions

- Anachronism, inability to use a modern example on an old one

- Crisis of representation

Crisis of Representation

a common postmodern notion according to which all representations of meaning depend on their relationships with other signs, and therefore it is impossible to identify one single true representation of reality.

- Can you ever truly represent another culture without reproducing hierarchy or distortion?

Herbert Spencer (S - 1870s)

Human culture progresses from simple to more complex forms, adopting an evolutionary framework

E.B Tylor (A - 1870s)

Founder of cultural anthropology, culture is something you exist within

James Frazor (A - 1890) Golden Bough

Culture: Magic -> Religion -> science

humans initially relied on magic attempting to control natural forces, this failed to produce consistent results so they turned to religion and then science after development of empirical observation.

Criticisms: armchair A, imposed Western stereotypes and beliefs on non-Western societies.

Emil Durkheim (S- 1890s)

- Collective effervescence offered by rituals

- Structural functionalism

- Social science should be holistic, social solidarity mechanical (pre-modern similarities hold us together) and organic (independence holds us together)

Max Weber (S and H 1900s)

Disagreed with Marx who said class structure was the only way to view how society worked. He believed that human values affected how people act and Protestant crucial to capitalism (as P feelings of gui;t translated to hard work)

Bronislaw Malinowski (A - 1900)

Founder of ethnographic approach

Franz Boas (A -1900, bolstered Malinowski's works)

father of modern American anthropology; argued for cultural relativism and historical particularism

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (A - 1920s)

Structural Functional approach

Society complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability

Claude Lévi-Strauss (A - 1930s)

- Goal of anthropology is

to uncover the unconscious symbolic systems underlying all cultures, which remain consistent across time and societies | Also believed in binary opposites

- Structuralism argues that form takes precedence over content; that is, overarching social and cultural structures are critical for the understanding of smaller socio-cultural behaviors, objects, and events. Cultures are structured around binary opposites like life/death and nature/culture -

Strauss - in order to succeed, both historian and ethnographer must have the same qualities:

skill, precision, a systematic approach, and objectivity

Structural Functionalism

a conceptual framework positing that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium

Edward Evans Pritchard (A - 1940)

Social anthropology, influenced by Malinowksi, began developing RB's program of structural-functionalism when at Oxford. Interrelation of social institutions and their roles in maintaining societal cohesion

EP Thompson (H - 1960s)

Pioneered shift away from the orthodox Marxist approach from economics to culture/ideology, culture is a dynamic and contested process

Clifford Geertz (A (influenced by Weber) - 1960)

'thick description', understand culture through its symbolic meanings

Victor Turner (A - 1960)

Communitas and liminality.

Three stages of a ritual: stripping of social status -> liminal phase -> reintegrated into community at higher status.

Three meaning of ritual:

Exegetical (subjective), positional (relation of objects in the ritual), objective

Keith Thomas (H - 1960)

Anthropological methods to understand witchcraft in EME

Marshall Sahlins (A - 1980)

Critique of reductionist theories of human nature, emphasised importance of historical context in anthropological studies e.g. how historical events influence cultural practices and vice versa

Robert Darnton (H - 1980s)

Anthropological cultural relativism to understand 18thC France

Peter Burke (H - 1990s)

Anthropology to study early modern Europe within its own cultural context

Bernard Cohn (A - 1990s) quote

'Research in history is based on finding data; research in anthropology is based on creating data'. Helped contribute to historical anthropology

Ronald Hutton (H - 2000s)

approach blends a broad geographic sweep with detailed attention of microhistory through the use of anthropology to advocate the end of witch hunting.

Clifford Geertz culture quote

'man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science but an interpretive one in search of meaning.'

Clifford Geertz on symbols

'humans are in need of symbolic sources of illumination to orient themselves'

Clifford Geertz capital letters

''The anthropologist confronts the same grand realities that historians do, but 'he confronts them in contexts obscure enough to take the capital letters off them.'

E.H Carr on interdisciplinary study

'the more sociological history becomes and the more historical sociology becomes, the better for the both'

Edward Evans-Pritchard quote

'how can an Oxford don work himself into the mind of a serf of Louis the Pious?'

Greg Dening quote

'there is no past that I describe that is not joined to my present: there is no other that I can describe that is not joined to myself'.

Cultural relativism - P

Historians have learnt to use cultural relativism

Cultural relativism - E (4)

1) 335 journeymen in 1666 and 340 in 1721 but number of masters declined from more than half from 83 to 39

2) 'there was nothing unusual about the ritual killing of cats'

3) 'turning the tables on the bourgeoisie' as revenge for their poor working conditions (cats had been screeching, master called for exorcism which failed, workers ordered to remove the cats except for la grise)

4) 'by getting the joke of the great cat massacre, it may be possible to 'get' a basic ingredient of artisanal culture under the Ancien Regime.

Cultural relativism - A (4)

- Franz Boas 'father of American Anthropology' cultural relativism: concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural contexts

- Historians have tended to treat the era of artisanal manufacturing as an idyllic period prior to industrialisation, some say the master and journeymen laboured at the same table and slept under the same roof (studying more than historical documents can reveal a lot about society)

- By immersing himself in carnival traditions and reading the diary of contat he uses cultural relativism to reveal that the cats carried layered symbolic meanings: a woman's sexuality, humiliation, and even witchcraft

- Our own inability to get the joke is an indication of the distance that separates us from the workers of preindustrial Europe

Qualitative - P

Hs have learnt to be qualitative and to compare and contrast societies when creating a bigger picture

Qualitative - E

1) 'anthropology is an explicitly comparative discipline and this has forced Hs to look at their particular studies in a wider context

2) For the Azande, 'belief in witchcraft is a valuable corrective to uncharitable impulses' because a show of hostility may bring serious consequences to the subject. Applies this to post-Reformation social tensions that only broke down during Poor Law of 1601 and institutionalisation of aid

3) Judicial cases are the 'tip of the iceberg' (Keith Thomas) legal records are the primary source of evidence for Hs studying witchcraft but these records only capture formal accusations

Qualitative - A (3)

- Keith vs Radcliffe-Brown ('many disadvantages in mixing the two subjects together and confusing them')

Radcliffe-Brown: They have distinct objectives and methodologies, combining both would reduce analytical clarity

Keith Thomas: Historians can borrow from anthropologists without reducing historical rigour.

- Keith Thomas, a social anthropologist today does not set out to produce sweeping generalisations about the whole of human society, he is more likely to devote a lifetime to the specialised study of at most two or three societies

- Hs must first collect and analyse records to establish scale and facts of witchcraft persecutions, As (or Hs using A) can then interpret the cultural meanings of those facts

History's impact on Anthropology - P

History has helped anthropologists to identify periods of change and continuity and to contextualise their research

H's impact on A - E (4)

1) Sahlins' critique (1980s) of anthropologies that tried to explain a universal human behaviour like James Frazer's golden bough. This strips away the very thing that gives those institutions their meaning: history, cultures interpret historical events in different ways

2) Segalen - its shaped by historical and social contexts, what counts as a 'normal' family differs between time periods and societies. Post World War I mechanisation effected families depending on whether they were urban or rural. Some in Brittany worked between 13-18 hours a day, wheras urban women complained about being 'deprived of their role as producer'

3) Historians read culture in layers of narrative, As 'live' culture as an everyday. Hs more concerned about how culture has changed over time, examining it through the framework of historical change. As often explore contemporary cultures, while Hs may focus on how past cultures have influenced present-day societies

4) Hawaii / Cook

H's impact on A - A (4)

- Martine Segalen (1991) counters notion of Hs being more diachronic and As more synchronic as interdisciplinary studies have begun to bridge this gap. As must account for historical changes like war and can't treat kinship or gender roles as static or universal, must be understood in relation to specific historical events

- Move away from establishing a universal scientific theory of cultural change -> focus on the specificities of each culture and how it changes over time in response to internal and external factors. Broader interest in understanding family's role in larger social processes such as migration, industrialisation, and urbanisation

- Peter Laslett (H - 1972) - nuclear family not the product of IR but rather a dominant form of household and family in pre-industrial societies

- Historical anthropologists gather data from a variety of sources, including archaeological findings, historical documents, and oral traditions.

Methodologies - P

As and Hs have differing methodologies

Methodologies - E (3)

1) Bernard Cohn contends that the H works in three spheres: 'the libraries and archives, the classroom, and their office' he has more books than the A but his office 'lacks the touch of the exotic which the A cultivates'

2) When working with Hs on the Indian untouchables, Bernard Cohn felt 'hampered' not knowing the people that he was dealing with, except from what was in record.

3) Geertz - 'As don't study villages, they study in villages'

Methodologies - A (5)

- Most cases the anthropologist did once live in, or at least visit, the society which they are describing wheras the historian usually has to work exclusively from documents or achaeological remains

- Keith Thomas 'the H has so often to rely upon his imagination to trace links or deduce consequences which the A can see before his eyes'

- The H departs from a place of knowing and that there is a reality out there to be measured and explained

- The anthropologist accepts by contrast that the reality, intersubjectively, may never be fully known

- Carlo Ginzburg 'about Menocchio we know many things. About so many others like him who lived and died without leaving a trace, we know nothing'.

Thick description - P

As are good at thick description but struggle to paint larger narratives

Thick description - E (3)

1) When Benthamites and Hs may view participating in the Balinese cockfight a 'deep play' as irrational due to high monetary stakes, an A, through thick description would discover that it is less a game of utility and disutility, and more the 'migration of the Balinese status hierarchy into the body of the cockfight'

2) At stake is 'esteem, honor, dignity, and ultimately, status'. The extremely poor, socially despised and personally idosyncratic played smaller-stake games on the peripheries of the central cockfight reflecting their lower status

3) Kinship... a man feels obliged to bet for a cock owned by a member of his own kingroup. You rarely get two cocks from the same group and if your kingroup is not involved you will support an allied kingroup against an unallied one

Thick description - A (3)

- Attending cockfights is a kind of sentimental education, what he learns there is his culture's ethos and his private sensibility when spelled out externally in a collective text. Only reading documents and records can offer a skewed narrative.

- Keith Thomas himself acknowledges this challenge of transferring deep anthropological studies into broader generalisations, contending that the anthropologist does not seek out to produce 'sweeping generalisations about the whole of society' as it would be naive to use one study of society to draw conclusions about global phenomena

- Robert Darnton: 'this kind of open-ended interpretation may make the reader uneasy. Hs like to nail things down, not pry them loose'.

Interpreter's bias - P

Various ways to deal with interpreter's bias, but ultimately, they should embrace it