Historical anthropology is a

historiographical Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...

movement which applies methodologies and objectives from

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and

cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...

to the study of historical societies. Like most such movements, it is understood in different ways by different scholars, and to some may be synonymous with the

history of mentalities The history of mentalities or ''histoire des mentalités'' ( French; ) is the body of historical works aimed at describing and analyzing the ways in which people of a given time period thought about, interacted with, and classified the world around ...

cultural history Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...

ethnohistory Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

microhistory Microhistory is a genre of history that focuses on small units of research, such as an event, community, individual or a settlement. In its ambition, however, microhistory can be distinguished from a simple case study insofar as microhistory aspires ...

history from below A people's history, or history from below, is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than leaders. There is an emphasis on disenfranchised, the oppressed, the p ...

or ''

Alltagsgeschichte ''Alltagsgeschichte'' (German; and sometimes translated as 'history of everyday life') is a form of social history that was emerged among West German historians in the 1980s. It was founded by Alf Lüdtke (1943–2019) and Hans Medick (born 1939 ...

''. Anthropologists whose work has been particularly inspirational to historical anthropology include

Emile Durkheim Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *''Emil and the Detective ...

Clifford Geertz Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades. ...

Arnold van Gennep Arnold van Gennep, in full Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep (23 April 1873 – 7 May 1957) was a Dutch–German-French ethnographer and folklorist. Biography He was born in Ludwigsburg, in the Kingdom of Württemberg (since 1871, part of the G ...

, Jack Goody,

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (10 April 1857 – 13 March 1939) was a French scholar trained in philosophy who furthered anthropology with his contributions to the budding fields of sociology and ethnology. His primary field interest was ways of thinking. ...

Marcel Mauss Marcel Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and ...

and

Victor Turner Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as ...

.Elizabeth A. Ten Dyke, 'Anthropology, Historical' in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, ed. by Kelly Boyd (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), pp. 37--40 (p. 38). Peter Burke has contrasted historical anthropology with

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

, finding that historical anthropology tends to focus on qualitative rather than quantitative data, smaller communities, and symbolic aspects of culture. Thus it reflects a turn in 1960s

Marxist historiography Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided soci ...

away from 'the orthodox Marxist approach to human behaviour in which actors are seen as motivated in the first instance by economics, and only secondarily by culture or ideology', in the work of historians such as E. P. Thompson. Historical anthropology was rooted in the Annales school, associated with a succession of major historians such as

Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian and leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: ''The Mediterranean'' (1923–49, then 1949–66), ''Civilization and Capitalism'' ...

Jacques Le Goff Jacques Le Goff (1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries. Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term t ...

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie (, born 19 July 1929) is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ''Ancien Régime'', particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of France, Le Roy Ladurie h ...

and

Pierre Nora Pierre Nora (born 17 November 1931) is a French historian elected to the Académie française on 7 June 2001. He is known for his work on French identity and memory. His name is associated with the study of new history. He is the brother of ...

, along with researchers from elsewhere in Europe such as

Carlo Ginzburg Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an Ita ...

. The label ''historical anthropology'' has been actively promoted by some recent Annales school historians, such as

Jean-Claude Schmitt Jean-Claude Schmitt (born 4 March 1946 in Colmar) is a prominent French medievalist, the former student of Jacques Le Goff, associated with the work of the Annales School. He studies the socio-cultural aspects of medieval history in Western Eu ...

. Established in 1929 by

Marc Bloch Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch (; ; 6 July 1886 – 16 June 1944) was a French historian. He was a founding member of the Annales School of French social history. Bloch specialised in medieval history and published widely on Medieval France ov ...

and

Lucien Febvre Lucien Paul Victor Febvre (, ; 22 July 1878 – 11 September 1956) was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He was the initial editor of the '' Encyclopédie française'' together wi ...

, the journal ''

Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales ''Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales'' is a French academic journal covering social history that was established in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. The journal gave rise to an approach to history known as the ''Annales'' School. The journ ...

'' is still among the most influential French publications for research in historical anthropology. Historical anthropology has been open to similar criticisms to anthropology: 'as Bernard Cohn and

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

and Jean Comaroff have observed, studies in which societies were represented in this way were often partial, biased, and unwitting handmaidens to the domination of non-Western peoples by Europeans and Americans'. But since the Second World War, increasingly reflexive approaches have led to sophisticated developments of the field, and the banner of 'historical anthropology' has often attracted Anglo-American historians in ways that the Annales school did not: key figures have been

Sidney Mintz Sidney Wilfred Mintz (November 16, 1922 – December 27, 2015) was an American anthropologist best known for his studies of the Caribbean, creolization, and the anthropology of food. Mintz received his PhD at Columbia University in 1951 and cond ...

, Jay O'Brien, William Roseberry, Marshall Sahlins, Jane Schneider, Peter Schneider,

Eric Wolf Eric Robert Wolf (February 1, 1923 – March 6, 1999) was an anthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxist perspectives within anthropology. Early life Life in Vienna Wolf was born in Vi ...

, Peter Burke, and people from elsewhere in the world such as Aaron Gurevich.

References

Historiography Interdisciplinary historical research Fields of history Anthropology {{Anthropology-stub

See also

References