Historical anthropology of the Middle Ages (review)

Abstract

148 Reviews Gurevich, Aaron, Historical anthropology of the Middle Ages, ed. Jana Howlett, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992; cloth; pp. xv, 247; R.R.P. AUS$95.00 [distributed in Australia by Allen & Unwin]. Aaron Gurevich's editorial hybrid of old and new articles is less historical anthropology, or ethno-history, than the illustration of an intellect which for more than three decades has struggled to imbue his working methods, gleaned from anthropology, folklore studies, linguistic research, and the example of the Annales school, with a deep sense of morality and humanity when trying to understand people in the past. Gurevich's book is also one more thing: a crude fishing trip by the editor Jana Howlett, in which any article of Gurevich's that has not seen the light of an Anglophone day over the past thirty years or more is thrown into a stew named 'historical anthropology' without regard for the content and purpose of the original essay. In short, Howlett has not served Gurevich well and, although this book has a title which would suggest it to be methodologically groovier-than-thou, it is not. The reader should rather see this book as providing some insights into Gurevich's historical thinking and how this thinking came to fruition in his more interesting Categories of medieval culture and Medieval popular culture. Gurevich's moral humanism (for want of a better term) is the underlying rhythm that unites the two parts: 'Methodology' and 'Case Studies'. He emphasizes that all history is nothing but a reflection of the present and so the historian must always be morally alert in not forgetting the humanity of humans. In contrast to the passion evident in Gurevich's warm humanism, the anthropology mentioned in the eleven chapters is weak, poorly digested, and oldfashioned . More importantly, it not only produces a history that comes close to being ahistorical at times but a history which is at odds with the morality that Gurevich wants to recommend. What Gurevich labels as 'historical anthropology', and he does use this term in thetitleof thefirstchapter, is rather the plea of a scholar educated in the closed system of the former Soviet Union, unable to travel to archives or colleagues. This is most painfully brought out in the second chapter where Gurevich writes about the Annales school and laments not having actually met any Annalistes. Deeply learned in the printed sources he has access to, limited in theoretical orientation, and longing to be part of a wider academic world, Gurevich, condemns all historical endeavours that leave out human sympathy and moral judgment in the pursuit of making history an impersonal science and the historian a scientific automaton. The first five chapters that make up Part I were all written relatively recently, in the eighties or the seventies, yet all of them are not only now dated but were so even at the times they were written. This is especially so in the two best essays in this section: chapters 1 ('Historical anthropology and the science Reviews 149 of history') and 2 ('Medieval culture and mentaliti according to the new French historiography'), where some lucid comments on history, especially that associated with the Annales, is mixed with intellectual simplicity and, absurdly in a book with the title this one has, an understanding of anthropology that borders on no understanding at all. Throughout the book, the references to anthropology refer not only to a small number of names, but also possess a confusion as to what anthropology is or might be. For example, Gurevich appears to consider folklore studies in general, or the work of Mikhail Bakhtin in particular, to be anthropological. Indeed, one learns more about Gurevich's understanding of anthropology through his just and valuable criticism of historians such as Jacques Le Goff, Philippe Aries, Georges Duby, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie than through any of his discussions of anthropology. It must be added that Gurevich's criticism of the Annalistes is not anthropological in nature, it is rather historical, Marxist, and moved by his earnest moral humanism. Nevertheless, Gurevich's discussion does highlight one thing about the Annales school: its knowledge of anthropology was, and still is, quite mediocre and half-formed...