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What does anthropology contributeto world history?

jack goody

In the beginning

Although its name indicates an interest in all humankind (anthropos), anthro-pology nevertheless con ned itself to earlier and simpler cultures and steeredaway from the modern. But what were the boundaries? In the work of thepioneers, E. B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer, this was primitive man includingsurvivals in later times, king-killing in Europe as well as monarchys role insupposedly curing scrofula, known as the Kings Evil.1 This role of anthropol-ogy meant collecting data in non-literate societies from anywhere in the world,and it provided a kind of social and intellectual account of those societies. Thiswould have tted the requirements of a history of the world very well.

But it had no substantial successors. With Bronislaw Malinowski and hisRevolution in Anthropology, the subject concentrated on the analysis of particu-lar non-literate societies, essentially through eldwork methods, that is, throughobservation in a detailed study of a single society. The belief was that aggregatingthe knowledge of such cultures served to distort them. Since every society wasdifferent, comparison was impossible, or possible only among close neighbours.On the face of it, the elds of anthropology and world history moved far apart.

Thus, for many the two elds of history and anthropology have hadtheir place at opposite ends of the academic spectrum. World historyinvolves the consideration of written societies before, that is, of prehistory.Earlier anthropology concentrated on the study of society before writing,and, therefore, lacked such accounts or observation. It has largely con nedcomparison to these primitive and simple societies; however, in the post-world war period it also took its students through the classical sociologists,

1 Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philoso-phy, Religion, Art, and Custom, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1871); and James GeorgeFrazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 12 vols. (London: Macmillan,1915).

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