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History and Anthropology: The State of Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Bernard S. Cohn
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago

Extract

This paper is an exploration of two models, “Anthropologyland” and “Historyland,” which exist in the practices and minds of anthropologists and historians. It is about how particular forms of knowledge are created, written and spoken about. It is about what historians and anthropologists do and say they do.

Type
Approaches to Historical Comparison
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1980

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References

This is a much traveled paper. It started with an invitation from the History Department of the University of New South Wales in Sydney to discuss with them my ideas about the relationship between history and anthropology. In addition, the paper in various forms was delivered at: the Research School of Pacific Studies at Australian National University; the Department of History, La Trobe University; the American Historical Association meetings, San Francisco, December 1978; and the faculty seminar of the Department of History, The University of Chicago. A number of friends and colleagues wittingly and unwittingly have contributed to the paper. The basic analytical categories of “Anthropologyland” and “Historyland” are the creation of Ronald Inden, with whom this paper has been talked out in innumerable and interminable conversations. Discussions with Mike Pearson, Anthony Low, Diane Bell, and Rhys Isaac helped shape the earlier versions. Sylvia Thrupp, Raymond Grew and Maurice Mandelbaum, who heard the San Francisco version, must bear the responsibility for my publishing it. Although they might deny it, a number of my colleagues have over the years influenced my thinking on questions explored in this paper, particularly Milton Singer, Edward Shils, David Schneider, Raymond T. Smith, George Stocking, Marshall Sahlins, Harry Harutonnian and Julius Kirshner. Of course, none of these are prey to the foibles and follies which I may associate with the practice of history and anthropology.