Historical Ethnography and Peasant Societies
Historical Ethnography and Peasant Societies

Author: Alan Macfarlane

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-08

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1000815218

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Historical Ethnography and Peasant Societies: McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch is a collection of interviews that is being published as a book for the first time. These interviews have been conducted by a leading British social anthropologist and historian, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of several years, the three conversations in this volume are a part of the series Creative Lives and Works. These transcriptions cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences and the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume is on three of the world’s most eminent sociologists and anthropologists – McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch. These interviews extend the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, moving on from when fieldwork was somewhat limited to the concentration of a civilization or community’s past, and how it fits within the historical context of the discipline. Since then, it has expanded to one where peasant cultures and communities have become the focal point of study. McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch talk about both overcoming and understanding the importance of fieldwork—considering linguistic, historical, economic and cultural elements in the study of these societies through their engaging conversations and occasional anecdotes. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection gives a flavour of the many different societies and cultures in far-flung reaches of the world encompassing several continents, often with no knowledge of each other’s existence, and of how expansive the disciple of sociology and social anthropology is. The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in the subject of Sociology, Social Anthropology and Ethnography, but also to those with an avid interest in History, Culture Studies as well as those with a general interest in learning about other societies. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan).

The Ethnographic Moment
The Ethnographic Moment

Author: Robert Redfield

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 2011-12-31

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1412809045

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first fifty years of the twentieth century were a time of ferment in American anthropology. American ethnographic work evolved from the "salvage" work of professionals affiliated with museums who undertook to document with artifacts and testimony the threatened traditional way of life among the Native American tribes, to the establishment of anthropology as a science, represented in university departments, that sought to describe the "ethnographic present" of isolated primitive peoples, often in distant parts of the world. By the beginning of the 1950s, cultural anthropology discovered the peasant. Robert Redfield, himself a leading figure in this paradigm shift, challenged anthropology's focus on a static model of the isolated primitive community, pointing out the dynamic nature of the "little communities" he studied in Mesoamerica. These were not isolated communities, but rather local, traditional cultures located well within the sphere of a complex urban culture. In order to distinguish the "great tradition" deriving from urban centers from the "little tradition" of a more primitive culture, Redfield believed anthropology needed to refer to other disciplines, such as theology, philosophy, economics, and sociology. In other words, anthropology had to develop from the collection of material artifacts to a concern with the immaterial realm of values and ideas. This collection of essays and previously unpublished papers, The Ethnographic Moment, tells the story of a remarkable chapter in Redfield's pioneering efforts on what was then an anthropological frontier. The present volume covers the years from 1952 to 1958, the last of Redfield's life. It focuses solely on his study of peasant communities. At the core of the book is his correspondence with the philosopher-humanist F. G. Friedmann, who played an important role in Redfield's conceptualization of the complex urban-rural continuum that characterizes the peasant's world. The volume also includes an autobiographical introduction by Friedmann that illuminates both his own writings and the humanistic background that motivated his study of peasantry.

Reconceptualizing The Peasantry
Reconceptualizing The Peasantry

Author: Michael Kearney

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-07

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0429977417

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The concept of ?peasant? has been constructed from residual images of pre-industrial European and colonial rural society. Spurred by Romantic sensibilities and modern nationalist imaginations, the images the word peasant brings to mind are anachronisms that do not reflect the ways in which rural people live today. In this path-breaking book, Michael Kearney shows how the concept has been outdistanced by contemporary history. He situates the peasantry within the current social context of the transnational and post?Cold War nation-state and clears the way for alternative theoretical views.Reconceptualizing the Peasantry looks at rural society in general and considers the problematic distinction between rural and urban. Most definitions of and debates about peasants have focused on their presumed social, economic, cultural, and political characteristics, but Kearney articulates the way in which peasants define themselves in a rapidly changing world. In the process, he develops ethnographic and political forms of representation that correspond to contemporary postpeasant identities. Moving beyond a reconsideration of peasantry, the book situates anthropology in global context, showing how the discipline reconstructs itself and its subjects according to changing circumstances.

Peasant Russia
Peasant Russia

Author: Christine Worobec

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 9780691031514

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Peasant Russia is a comprehensive examination of peasant life in central Russia in the decades immediately following serf emancipation. Using interdisciplinary methods of family history, anthropology, ethnography, and women's studies, Christine Worobec explores the world of peasant households and communities, elements of which live on in today's Soviet Union. In full detail she shows how peasant Russia retained its traditional institutions and customary practices in the face of the economic changes associated with industrialization and urbanization. The book draws on previously unexamined judicial, folklore, and household records to assess the durability of the extended Russian peasant family and the customs linking it to the community. The Russian peasants portrayed here actively shaped their society, developing a variety of economic and social strategies to cope with their harsh environment and the demands of the state. Discussing their efforts to safeguard their way of life through courtship and marriage rituals and through such social restrictions as property devolution practices, a misogynist patriarchalism, and severe penalties for deviant behavior, Worobec reveals that peasant traditionalism impeded the impact of modernization and cushioned its effects.

Peasent Society And Culture
Peasent Society And Culture

Author: Robert Redfield

Publisher: Legare Street Press

Published: 2022-10-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781016611121

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Old Faith and the Russian Land
The Old Faith and the Russian Land

Author: Douglas Rogers

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2010-12-15

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0801457955

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a historical ethnography that charts the ebbs and flows of ethical practice in a small Russian town over three centuries. The town of Sepych was settled in the late seventeenth century by religious dissenters who fled to the forests of the Urals to escape a world they believed to be in the clutches of the Antichrist. Factions of Old Believers, as these dissenters later came to be known, have maintained a presence in the town ever since. The townspeople of Sepych have also been serfs, free peasants, collective farmers, and, now, shareholders in a post-Soviet cooperative. Douglas Rogers traces connections between the town and some of the major transformations of Russian history, showing how townspeople have responded to a long series of attempts to change them and their communities: tsarist-era efforts to regulate family life and stamp out Old Belief on the Stroganov estates, Soviet collectivization drives and antireligious campaigns, and the marketization, religious revival, and ongoing political transformations of post-Soviet times. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival and manuscript sources, Rogers argues that religious, political, and economic practice are overlapping arenas in which the people of Sepych have striven to be ethical—in relation to labor and money, food and drink, prayers and rituals, religious books and manuscripts, and the surrounding material landscape. He tracks the ways in which ethical sensibilities—about work and prayer, hierarchy and inequality, gender and generation—have shifted and recombined over time. Rogers concludes that certain expectations about how to be an ethical person have continued to orient townspeople in Sepych over the course of nearly three centuries for specific, identifiable, and often unexpected reasons. Throughout, he demonstrates what a historical and ethnographic study of ethics might look like and uses this approach to ask new questions of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

Marxism and Anthropology
Marxism and Anthropology

Author: Maurice Bloch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1136548939

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the uses made of anthropology by Marx and Engels, and the uses made of Marxism by anthropologists. Looking at the writings of Marx and Engels on primitive societies, the book evaluates their views in the light of present knowledge and draws attention to inconsistencies in their analysis of pre-capitalist societies. These inconsistencies can be traced to the influence of contemporary anthropologists who regarded primitive societies as classless. As Marxist theory was built around the idea of class, without this concept the conventional Marxist analysis foundered. First published in 1983.

The Old Faith and the Russian Land
The Old Faith and the Russian Land

Author: Douglas Rogers

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-02-04

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0801459192

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a historical ethnography that charts the ebbs and flows of ethical practice in a small Russian town over three centuries. The town of Sepych was settled in the late seventeenth century by religious dissenters who fled to the forests of the Urals to escape a world they believed to be in the clutches of the Antichrist. Factions of Old Believers, as these dissenters later came to be known, have maintained a presence in the town ever since. The townspeople of Sepych have also been serfs, free peasants, collective farmers, and, now, shareholders in a post-Soviet cooperative. Douglas Rogers traces connections between the town and some of the major transformations of Russian history, showing how townspeople have responded to a long series of attempts to change them and their communities: tsarist-era efforts to regulate family life and stamp out Old Belief on the Stroganov estates, Soviet collectivization drives and antireligious campaigns, and the marketization, religious revival, and ongoing political transformations of post-Soviet times. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival and manuscript sources, Rogers argues that religious, political, and economic practice are overlapping arenas in which the people of Sepych have striven to be ethical-in relation to labor and money, food and drink, prayers and rituals, religious books and manuscripts, and the surrounding material landscape. He tracks the ways in which ethical sensibilities-about work and prayer, hierarchy and inequality, gender and generation-have shifted and recombined over time. Rogers concludes that certain expectations about how to be an ethical person have continued to orient townspeople in Sepych over the course of nearly three centuries for specific, identifiable, and often unexpected reasons. Throughout, he demonstrates what a historical and ethnographic study of ethics might look like and uses this approach to ask new questions of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.