Timothy Larsen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199657872
- eISBN:
- 9780191785573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657872.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973) was the leading anthropologist at the University of Oxford in the mid-twentieth century and the greatest British anthropologist of his generation. He obtained his ...
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E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973) was the leading anthropologist at the University of Oxford in the mid-twentieth century and the greatest British anthropologist of his generation. He obtained his doctoral training at the London School of Economics where Bronislaw Malinowski reigned, and did his fieldwork in the southern Sudan. Evans-Pritchard’s landmark study, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, challenged the existing assumption that ‘primitive’ people were ‘pre-logical’. An adult convert to Roman Catholicism, Evans-Pritchard launched a counter-attack against the rationalistic anthropologists, including Tylor and Frazer, who had dismissed religion as erroneous. His Nuer Religion was a defence of the theological sophistication and inherent worth of a traditional African religion. Evans-Pritchard himself was particularly drawn to mysticism as his own way of practising his Christian faith and as a valid source of authentic spiritual insights.Less
E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973) was the leading anthropologist at the University of Oxford in the mid-twentieth century and the greatest British anthropologist of his generation. He obtained his doctoral training at the London School of Economics where Bronislaw Malinowski reigned, and did his fieldwork in the southern Sudan. Evans-Pritchard’s landmark study, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, challenged the existing assumption that ‘primitive’ people were ‘pre-logical’. An adult convert to Roman Catholicism, Evans-Pritchard launched a counter-attack against the rationalistic anthropologists, including Tylor and Frazer, who had dismissed religion as erroneous. His Nuer Religion was a defence of the theological sophistication and inherent worth of a traditional African religion. Evans-Pritchard himself was particularly drawn to mysticism as his own way of practising his Christian faith and as a valid source of authentic spiritual insights.
Christopher Morton
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198812913
- eISBN:
- 9780191850707
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198812913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture, Sociology of Religion
Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South ...
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Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged. This book then is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard’s theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard’s anthropology.Less
Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged. This book then is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard’s theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard’s anthropology.
Robert W. Blunt
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226655611
- eISBN:
- 9780226655895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226655895.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
The introduction seeks to add to, but also move beyond more sociological analyses of elder authority by reviewing classic works on the eldership complex through the category of sovereignty. The work ...
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The introduction seeks to add to, but also move beyond more sociological analyses of elder authority by reviewing classic works on the eldership complex through the category of sovereignty. The work of scholars like E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer, Monica Wilson, and Paul Spencer constitute a platform for an historical anthropology of elderhood in their mutually supplemental attempts to define elderhood substantively, relationally, and diachronically. The introduction makes a case for the continued relevance of historical and critical approaches to the study of religion and politics. By attending to how Kenyans have popularly understood sovereignty over time, and how different social actors have attempted to exclusively protect, usurp, inhabit, and enact particular forms and processes of power and authority, the book asserts the ethnographic and historical basis for anthropological theory production.Less
The introduction seeks to add to, but also move beyond more sociological analyses of elder authority by reviewing classic works on the eldership complex through the category of sovereignty. The work of scholars like E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer, Monica Wilson, and Paul Spencer constitute a platform for an historical anthropology of elderhood in their mutually supplemental attempts to define elderhood substantively, relationally, and diachronically. The introduction makes a case for the continued relevance of historical and critical approaches to the study of religion and politics. By attending to how Kenyans have popularly understood sovereignty over time, and how different social actors have attempted to exclusively protect, usurp, inhabit, and enact particular forms and processes of power and authority, the book asserts the ethnographic and historical basis for anthropological theory production.
