British Anthropology Research Articles

Intersection of claim for Scheduled Tribe Status and Identity Politics among the Kurmi Mahto of Chotanagpur Region in India

Various forms of protest such as rail-road roko and election boycott have been displayed by the Kurmi community to show their strength and legitimacy in their claim for Scheduled tribe status. By analysing pre-independence census data by British anthropologists, their study of culture and tribal way of life, and current socio-economic and political standing, the authors have attempted to trace the location of Kurmis (Mahto) of Chotanagpur region in the indigeneity discourse and their claim for ST status.

Minakata Kumagusu in London: Challenging Eurocentrism in the pages of Nature

The Japanese biologist and ethnologist Minakata Kumagusu has achieved a degree of celebrity in Japan for being the first Asian contributor to the British scientific magazine Nature . However, although Minakata's many contributions to Nature from 1893 to 1914 provided British readers with rare insight into Asian scientific achievements, he is seldom discussed in history of science scholarship produced by American, British and European researchers. In this article we examine Minakata's Nature articles to gain insight into how his encounter with the Eurocentrism of British culture while living in London from 1892 to 1900 affected his intellectual development. We argue that having his articles published in Nature to gain scientific recognition was not Minakata's real goal. Rather, we demonstrate that his Nature articles were connected to a larger project that inspired Minakata for much of his life, a descriptive sociology of Japan. For this descriptive sociology, Minakata wished to construct a new form of historical analysis that drew on past Asian sources, as well as anthropological and sociological perspectives learned from British philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer and British anthropologists such as Edward Clodd, Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang. Minakata's writings reveal him to be much more than a conduit of information about Asia. He was also a pioneering global intellectual who demonstrated how Asian science complemented Western science.

Anthropological Glimpses of Japan in Nineteenth-Century Britain

This article explores two early anthropological works on Japan that were produced in Britain during the nineteenth century. The first is James Cowles Prichard's chapter on Japanese culture from the third edition of his Researches into the physical history of mankind (1844) . It represents the first formative study by a leading ethnologist to tackle the subject. The second is Edward Burnett Tylor's essay on Japanese belief for the Journal for the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1877). During the later decades of the nineteenth century, information about Japanese society still remained relatively incomplete. When Tylor wrote his important essay about Japan in the 1870s, he still drew on the same sources Prichard had used three decades earlier. Very little new ethnographic information had travelled back to England by the second half of the nineteenth century. As a result, researchers continued to struggle when writing about Japanese culture. What we get in these nineteenth-century writings is best described as anthropological ‘glimpses’ of Japan. By exploring these early sketches of Japan, a more textured disciplinary history emerges that helps to complexify and challenge the heroic and teleological narratives of British anthropology's supposed success story.

Circles and Mistakes: Interview with Tim Ingold

Tim Ingold is a British anthropologist, Social Anthro­pology Professor at the University of Aberdeen, Fellow of the British Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has explored the relationship between anthropology, architecture, art, and design; and through his work, has invited us to ‘think through making’ and ‘learn by doing’. Ingold is the author of Evolution and Social Life (Cam­bridge University Press, 1986); Lines: A Brief History (Routledge, 2007); Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (Routledge, 2010); and Anthropol­ogy: Why it Matters (Polity, 2018), among many other books. In this interview he responds to some questions about the practice of repair in his own daily life, but also the role and comprehension of repair in his intellectual work, and the possible connection between such action and the act of design.

The Dent in the Floor: Ecological Knowing in the Skilful Performance of Work

AbstractThis paper draws on a phenomenological perspective to explore how people develop and enact skill in work at through ecological knowing – a sensuous form of knowing in one's being embedded in and across place and time. In doing so, we abductively interweave the work of Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa and British anthropologist Tim Ingold with an empirical study of two industrial museums and two contemporary illustrations of choral conducting and motion capture performance. Our contribution is threefold: first, we expand theories of knowledge and corporeality by theorizing ecological knowing as encompassing emplaced wisdom and embodied skill – thus elevating embedded and embodied human agency in contrast to studies that focus on the body, skill, and knowledge as objects. Secondly, we present an alternative way of understanding how expertise develops and is enacted in work activities. Finally, we offer methodological resources, currently underutilized in management studies, for studying this sensorial form of knowing in a way that is consistent with its underlying phenomenological commitments.

Majumbu (‘Old Harry’) and the Spencer-Cahill bark painting collection

From 1912, British anthropologist W. Baldwin Spencer and buffalo-shooter Paddy Cahill collected 163 bark paintings made by artists who also painted in rock shelters in western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Spencer made detailed notes about the bark paintings, secret/sacred objects, and other material culture he collected and some rock art, as well as genealogies and other details of the Aboriginal people he encountered but did not record the names of the artists. In general, the names and life stories of the individuals who made most Aboriginal archaeological artefacts or ethnographic objects and paintings now in museums across the world are not known. We have recently begun to address this for western Arnhem Land contact period art and in this paper focus on an elder, Majumbu (‘Old Harry’), who made numerous rock paintings as well as at least eight of the Spencer-Cahill bark paintings. We use his work to begin a new interpretation of the importance of the Spencer-Cahill Collection in relation to land-based religion and show that knowing the names of the artists behind the collection, as well as related rock paintings, puts their work and the entire collection in new meaningful contexts.

Indija kao inspiracija u delima pseudonaučnika - primer Indijske rukoveti

The paper offers an analysis of the motif of India case studying Indijske rukoveti, an unusual collection of folk songs that includes twenty-three ritual songs selected by the authors of the collection. The selection criterion was that the songs/ poems should mention a concept that could co-relate the present-day Serbs with the space of ancient India. Most of the songs were recorded by Miloš S. Milojević back towards the end of the 19th century. Pseudo-science, and the motif of India in it, are contemplated in the paper in terms of the theory of purity and danger established by the British anthropologist Mary Douglas.

Mary Douglas on Purity and Danger: An Interview

This interview with Mary Douglas took place at Lancaster University in the Religious Studies Department. The main focus of the interview was her recently published book, Purity and Danger, which had already become a classic of British anthropology. The questions and answers ranged mainly over the differences between the physical body, representations of the body, the body as a classificatory system, and social constructivism. Douglas’s early academic years and the influences on her work, such as the role of Roman Catholicism in her childhood and youth, were discussed. The interview concluded with speculation about the connections between anthropology and colonialism, and how she responded to those developments.

Judging from the Inside

Recent years have seen three monographs (and some anthologies) dealing with the relationship between theology or faith and sociocultural anthropology (referred to simply as “anthropology” from here onwards). Larsen’s Slain God (2014) analyses how early British anthropologists had a personal relationship with matters of faith while Furani’s Redeeming Anthropology (2019) agonises the hegemony of Enlightenment secularism in anthropology. What is common to these texts is that they do not differentiate between theological argumentation or theology as an academic discipline and personal faith. Joel Robbins’ latest book, Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life (2020), recognises this difference, which is why, as a theological don of a non-confessional government-run university, I can recognise myself reflected in it. One of the reasons for Robbins’s ability to distinguish between the two may stem from his childhood experience concerning a rabbi who did not consider it absolutely necessary for proper execution of his work to be a believer, while many others probably would have (Robbins 2020: xii). The context of an academic theologian is the same: I may not consider that personal faith is a sine qua non of academic theology while some others certainly do.

Coda

Celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the first publication of the volume Anthropology and Autobiography (1992) edited by Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, AJEC 31(1) features an inspiring special issue devoted to this topic, then and now. Starting from the beginning, we learn about the appalling resistance Judith Okely faced when she suggested Anthropology and Autobiography as a theme for the 1989 ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK) Conference. The idea to include the experience of the fieldworker, his or her emotional reactions, and issues related to gender, age and race – in the research and later even the use of “I” in the writing – came from the ‘writing culture’ movement in the United States. This early resistance against reflexivity and autobiography in British anthropology can be understood as a generational intolerance of American intellectual influence. As Ernest Gellner (1988: 26) suggested in a review of Clifford Geertz’ Works and Lives: My own advice to anthropology departments is that this volume be kept in a locked cupboard, with the key in the possession of the head of department, and that students be lent it only when a strong case is made out by their tutors.

Commentary: Nationalism and Transnationalism in Anthropological Research

Commentary: Nationalism and Transnationalism in Anthropological Research

ГОЛОВА ДЛЯ ЧЕЛОВЕКА VS ЧЕЛОВЕК ДЛЯ ГОЛОВЫ: ПРЕДСТАВЛЕНИЯ, ОБЫЧАИ И ПРАКТИКИ У НАГА СЕВЕРО-ВОСТОЧНОЙ ИНДИИ

The present case study dwells upon the vision of a human head in the popular mind of the Naga tribes living in the state of Nagaland, India, in whose perception a human head has direct association with the fertility of both man and land, which triggered the desire to possess more heads and, consequently, resulted in head hunting once widespread in the countries of South-East Asia, Burma, Indonesia, New Zealand. The paper is based on the material provided by the monographs of British anthropologists published in early twentieth century and the field work done by the author in Naga villages after 2012.

The Metaphysics of Justice: Ayelala’s Rise in Benin and Other Parts of Edo State

This article discusses the origin, spread and efficacy of the deity Ayelala, who is responsible for the execution of justice. After an account of the deification of Ayelala, it discusses the recent spread of the deity, originally from the areas inhabited by the Ijaw, Ilaje, and Ikale, to Benin, where her presence has been highly effective in combating public crimes such as theft, robbery and kidnapping. Beyond the punishment and control of public crimes, a report of Ayelala’s revelations about the causes of a personal death also illustrates the deity’s ability to provide justice in personal matters. The article argues that doubts about Ayelala’s existence, as put forward by some critics, are illogical and indeed irrelevant as long as the deity is seen to produce results. Building on the arguments of the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, who suggests that witchcraft explains unfortunate events, this article argues that the experience of certain fortunate events, such as the punishment of evildoers or the revelation of metaphysical causes of death, confirm the existence of Ayelala as a counter-force to witchcraft and other forms of metaphysical evil.

Krystyny Pisarkowej odkrywanie Malinowskiego

Krystyna Pisarkowa’s Discovering of Malinowski The article is concerned with the two-volume publication Językoznawstwo Bronisława Malinowskiego [Bronisław Malinowski’s Linguistics], edited by Krystyna Pisarek. Its first volume contains the editor’s thorough analysis of the linguistic achievements of this Polish-born British anthropologist, while the second volume includes translations of Malinowski’s works and a dictionary of the Kiriwina language. The linguistic importance of Malinowski’s works had been underestimated: his articles “Classificatory Particles in the Language of Kiriwina” (1920) and “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages” (1923) were not included in the thirteen-volume collection of his writings (Dzieła [Works]). Pisarkowa, in turn, does recognize Malinowski’s contribution to linguistics and considers the following to be his unique achievements: (1) the discovery of the phatic function of speech (adopted by Roman Jakobson in his classification of language functions); (2) an explicit formulation of the principle of contextualism and the pragmatic aspect of word meaning; and (3) a precise description of the Kiriwina system of classificatory particles.

When Qing Law Encountered British Anthropology

Abstract This article conducts a textual and reception analysis of George Jamieson’s translation of Qing marriage law with the aim of probing a translational encounter between traditional Chinese law and British anthropology. Approaching a Qing clause against marriage between persons of the same family name as an object of anthropological study, Jamieson annotated his rendition with rich paratexts to orient it under the concept of exogamy. After reflecting upon predecessors’ theories, he advanced his own by restructuring existing anthropological constructs. Taking his translation as a knowledge source, Jamieson further highlighted the existence of an endogamous limit upon the exogamy rule; this observation was absorbed by Henry Maine to strengthen his argument that exogamy and endogamy were not oppositional in agnatic societies. As revealed in Jamieson’s interaction with British anthropologists, he proved himself more than a translator of Qing marriage law but also a contributor to nineteenth-century British anthropology.

Doing Diversity, Being Diversity

For many public institutions, ‘doing diversity’ exists as a performative act; a dance choreographed through acts of policy espousing a laudable song based on equality. The reality is somewhat different when it comes to implementation, as lofty ambitions give way to impermanent initiatives that are both strategically and tonally off-key. Today, many universities across the UK express their egalitarian aims based on progressive and sometimes decolonising theories of change, but all fail to deliver the pragmatic praxis demanded by their staff, students and collaborative research partners. This should not be so, especially for British anthropology departments which have sufficient authority to implement the structural changes required to make themselves representative of the worlds they study. Looking at this matter from the perspective of ‘race’, this paper calls for a pedagogical rebalancing of our discipline. It suggests a revaluation of the utility of meritocratic systems of evaluation and the employment of permanent ‘native’ staff in strategic roles to displace structural enclaves of hegemonic ‘whiteness’ could be enough to transform anthropology departments from doing diversity - into being it.

Embracing Liminality and "Staying with the Trouble" on (and off) Screen

Embracing Liminality and "Staying with the Trouble" on (and off) Screen

The new animism

The new animism

Ritual kak predmet religioznoy refleksii v britanskoy antropologii i katolicheskom traditsionalizme

This article discusses how the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the liturgical reform in the Catholic Church enhanced critical reflexivity on ritual semiotics and the boundaries of ritualism and anti-ritualism in British social anthropology (namely, in the works of Victor Turner and Mary Douglas) and in the protest movement of Catholic Traditionalism, and furnished the conditions for their discursive convergence. Since Turner and Douglas were Catholics, the similarities in the logic and rhetoric of academic and “folk” anthropology of ritual inevitably raise questions commonly labeled as the problem of belief, focusing on the risks and benefits of the anthropologist's religious commitments for ethnographic work. A close analysis of statements on liturgical reform by British anthropologists and Traditionalist Catholics shows that they share a common, Durkheimian view of ritual and social order; at the same time, intellectual and spiritual biographies of Turner and Douglas demonstrate that sometimes anthropology can influence anthropologists' belief as much as their belief influences their anthropology. These observations provide grounds for a revision of the problem of belief with a Protestant bias. The association of belief with the inner life and creeds is one of the many ways of conceptualizing the mediation of religious experience. In some cultures, such as traditional Catholicism, no lesser emphasis is placed on ritual performance. Thus, an exploration of the proximity of anthropological and Traditionalist “languages” of ritual description opens up prospects for a discussion of the place of attitudes toward ritual in anthropological epistemology and its historical roots.

Noises in communication: “double bind” during the epidemic of COVID-19 in Serbia

In this paper, through the application of the concept of double bind, formulated by the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his associates, the communicative contradiction of messages and instructions related to behavior in circumstances of epidemiological danger, announced by the government officials, doctors and the Crisis Staff during the corona virus epidemic in Serbia will be considered, as well as the consequences of such communication dissonance on the public perception of preventive and restrictive measures. The concept of double bind, which implies communication during which an individual or group from the position of authority continuously receives two or more conflicting messages that are mutually exclusive, without the possibility of feedback and resolving contradictions, is applicable to any type of cultural communication where it is important, although difficult, to correctly distinguish the obtained information. During the COVID-19 epidemic in Serbia, public messages concerning the degree of danger posed by the virus, contagion and mortality, vulnerable groups, the possibility of acquiring collective immunity, effective prevention measures, etc., were often accompanied by contradictory statements from policy makers or their actions, behavior and non-verbal communication that were contrary to what was verbally communicated and recommended. Since the communication was mostly oneway during the epidemic, because information was announced from the position of authority, through the media and at press conferences that were suspended for a certain period, without the possibility of clarifying the dilemmas, the collective dissatisfaction of recipients caused by misunderstandings and contradictions often manifested itself through humor, satire, refusal of obedience, protests, etc. This paper will consider the way in which double bind can represent a form of control and a shift of responsibility not only at the individual or family level, but also at the level of the society as a whole.