On Historical Anthropology: An Introduction

Abstract

The anthropology of sound is an important field of research in musicology as well as in cultural studies, in sociology and not the least in ethnology. When we talk about anthropology, most people in the English-speaking world think of ethnology. In my view this reduces anthropology to only one of its paradigms. Today it no longer seems meaningful to limit anthropology to ethnology as the study of so-called primitive peoples, tribal societies, and simple societies or to ethnographic research in modern societies. I propose a more comprehensive concept of anthropology as historical cultural anthropology covering four different paradigms. My aim is to develop a few of the principles and perspectives of anthropology, comparing and contrasting them with those emerging from research on evolution, philosophical anthropology in Germany, historical anthropology in France, and cultural anthropology in the United States and Europe, while also drawing on my own research during the last 30 years.