Anthropology and history: the revaluation of history in anthropological research.
The main premise of this paper is that the accepted view of history based on written documents (historiography) is marked by hierarchical ordering and evaluation implicit in it. The paper examines the context of the negation of history, and the revaluation of history in anthropological research. The lack of written documents concerning particular social groups on the internal plane, but also particular nations (ethnic groups) on the global plane, earned them the name of "nations (groups) without history". This criterion of historicity--the existence of a writing system and written documents--implies the hypothesis about the inferiority of those nations and groups. The attributes of history seen in this way are modernity, linearity and cumulativeness. This system implies ethnocentrism based on a twofold negation: a) the negation history, and b) the negation of otherness. What we must not forget is that the symbolic universes are social products with a history, and in order to understand their meaning, one must understand the history of their production. It is very important to pay close attention to the historical practice of projecting our cultural practices onto others. The question of who determines the history and which views are presented to a particular audience is a matter of power and contest. contemporary history-oriented sociocultural anthropology focuses on the total reconstruction of the way of life and thinking in particular periods of history: on the everyday life. This brought together the intellectual traditions of "new history", ethnology, sociocultural anthropology and the sociology of culture. While modernism stresses the present change versus the static past, postmodernism denies the past ever being static and hypostatises fluidity and change as permanent condition. Postmodernism strives to undermine the old, Euro-centric notion that "we" have a history but "they" do not; it has also lead to social scientists' renewed interest in history.
Colić
S
S
Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, Croatia.
D000883:Anthropology; D005007:Ethnology; D006663:Historiography; D006664:History; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design