Historical Anthropology and Longue Durée

Historical Anthropology

• A subfield of anthropology uses an interdisciplinary approach.
• Aims for understanding of how historical events and processes shape contemporary social and cultural dynamics.
• This includes power relations, social classifications, and colonial situations.
• Combines ethnographic methods with historical research.
• Examines changes and continuities over time.
• Utilizes historical records, oral histories, and archaeological evidence.
• Provides a voice to marginalized or subaltern groups.
• Challenges conventional historical narratives to uncover underlying power dynamics.

Longue Durée

• Fernand Braudel from Annales School coined this analytical approach.
• Emphasizes long-term historical structures and processes shaping societies and cultures over extended periods.
• Focuses on deep-seated structures, such as geography, climate, and social institutions.
• These structures persist over centuries to highlight slow, imperceptible changes.
• Integrates insights from various disciplines such as geography, sociology, and economics.
• Understanding continuity and change in cultural practices and social norms helps contextualize modern phenomena.
• Promotes a holistic perspective while challenging presentism.
• Reveals historical patterns and emphasizes material conditions.
• Facilitates comparative analysis and understanding of cultural resilience and adaptation.

Historical-Anthropological "Masters of Thought"

• Marshall Sahlins is known for work on the interplay between culture, practical reason, and history.
• Argued that human needs are culturally constructed rather than natural, influenced by cultural neo-evolutionism and Marxist theories.
• Emphasized that culture and history are intertwined, with cultural patterns influencing historical actions and vice versa, in "Islands of History."
• Introduced the concept of the "structure of the conjuncture" to explain how social actions within structures lead to cultural and historical changes.
• Jean and John Camaroff are known for their work on the intersection of ethnography and historical imagination.
• Their work focuses particularly among the Tswana people in South Africa.
• Their methodology challenges traditional dualisms and emphasizes the role of power, resistance, and agency in shaping social change.
• Advocates for a nuanced understanding of social practices that integrates historical context into ethnographic research.
• Deploys diachronic lens (analytical perspective): Examine phenomena, such as languages, cultures, or social structures, through their development and changes over time.
• Reveals the complexity and depth of cultural phenomena as products of long-term historical processes.
• Eric Wolf is known focusing on power dynamics and the integration of anthropology with historical analysis.
• Emphasized understanding societies within the context of global processes and power relations, critiquing the traditional anthropological focus on isolated societies.

Kinship

• A system of social relationships is based on family connections and social ties.
• Helps to understand how people are related to each other in different societies.
• Shapes social structure, responsibilities, and support systems.

Kindred

• A type of kinship, ego-centered, it is based on a specific person's point of view.
• Includes all the people that an individual sees as family, even if those people are not related or share a common ancestor.
• Typically includes parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Sociocentric

• A type of kinship based on descent: traces family ties through either the father's line (patrilineal) or the mother's line (matrilineal).
• Focuses on people connected through a common ancestor in a specific way.
• Different rules define how descent works: only people related through male ancestors are considered part of the kinship group, in a patrilineal society for instance.
• Kindred is about all the people one individual sees as family.
• Sociocentric is about tracing family lines through either the father's or mother's side based on set rules.

Structural-Functional Perspective on Kinship

• Views kinship as a key part of how society is organized and maintained.
• Kinship systems help keep society stable and connected by providing support, security, and a sense of identity.
• Kinship is seen is essential for social cohesion.
• Helps distribute resources fairly, maintain order, and build strong community ties.
• Kinship systems function like social tools: Help people understand their place in society and how to interact with others.
• Kinship systems offer support networks and a clear sense of identity.
• The of kinship also examines how kinship fits into bigger social, political, and economic systems.
• Kinship can influence leadership roles, decision-making, and distribution of wealth in a community.
• Descent groups (like clans or lineages) often form the basis of political power, economic cooperation, and social rules in societies without complex institutions.
• These groups help manage resources, resolve conflicts, and organize society.
• Sees kinship as a crucial part of keeping society stable and connected, especially in traditional societies, where family ties play a central role in politics, economics, and social order.

Genealogical Method

• Used to kinship, descent, and marriage relationships within a community.
• Aims to understand social structure and cultural practices related to kinship.
• Data collected through interviews with community members about relatives.
• Used to identify patterns of kinship and descent, like inheritance and marriage practices.
• Maps out family relationships and lineages through detailed records of ancestry and descent.
• Rooted in the study of kinship systems and social structure in Structural Functionalism.
• Provides insights into rules and norms governing marriage, residence patterns, inheritance, and social obligations.
• Useful in tracing lineages, focusing on documenting biological and marital connections within a family; often through family trees and charts.
• Provides historical context on how kinship ties have been maintained and transmitted across generations.
• Emphasis on biological relationships and legal bonds, such as marriage and inheritance.
• Presents a static view of kinship, focusing on established and formalized relationships.
• Making Kin is about creating relationships based on shared care, collaboration, and support, rather than blood or ancestry.
• Emphasizes forming connections with not just humans but also non-human entities like animals, plants, and even ecosystems.
• Inclusive and Sustainable Living: Build a broader sense of kinship encouraging coexistence and mutual respect among all living things.
• This approach promotes a way of life that is more inclusive and sustainable for the planet.
• This perspective sees kinship built through acts of care and cooperation, not just something inherited through family ties.

Genealogy

• Conceptualized by Michel Foucault, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morality).
• Focuses on how ideas, practices, and institutions change over time.
• Reveals the power dynamics behind what is considered true or normal.
• Rejects linear origins and fixed truths.
• Focuses on uncertain and unpredictable processes that shape society.
• Examines how power operates through institutions and practices to produce knowledge.
• Reveals how what is taken for granted is often constructed and arbitrary.
• Demonstrates that social practices and knowledge are shaped by specific historical contexts and power relations.
• Challenges the idea of a fixed or universal human nature.
• Questions the idea of pure beginnings and grand historical narratives while focusing on local and specific processes instead.
• Traces the development of modern punishment from earlier forms and shows how power and knowledge shaped today's penal system in context of Discipline and Punish.
• Examines the historical construction of sexual identities and norms; revealed how different forms of power influence understanding and regulation of sexuality in the context of The History of Sexuality.
• Foucault's genealogy uncovers the hidden power structures that shape knowledge, practices, and institutions, challenging fixed truths and encouraging critical thinking about the present.
• Problematization involves identifying and articulating the conditions that make certain issues or practices possible and problematic in the present.
• Genealogy seeks to make visible the contingent and complex nature of contemporary problems by examining how these conditions have emerged and evolved through genealogy.

History and Historiography

• History focuses on chronological events and aims to be objective and analytical as it seeks to create a universal narrative that goes beyond individual experiences.
• Historiography is the study of how history is written and interpreted.
• Influences how societies remember and understand their past.
• Should debunk myths and challenge national narratives, not preserve them.

Memory Studies

• Individual Memory: Personal recollections that shape one's identity and guide future actions.
• Collective Memory: shared memories passed through generations via ceremonies and traditions.
• Actively interpreted and reinterpreted based on present and future needs.
• Helps shape group identity and maintain social cohesion.
• Sites of Memory (Lieux de Mémoire) - Pierre Nora:
• Types of Sites: Material (Physical locations like monuments and museums), symbolic (sites with deep cultural meanings, like national flags), and functional (places that serve a role in preserving memory, like textbooks).
• Serves as anchors for collective memory in a world where spontaneous memory is fading.
• Metamorphosis of Memory: Shift from Social to Individual, memory has moved from being shared socially to a more individual responsibility accompanied by archival obsession where modern memory is fixated on preserving every detail through documents and archives.
• There is distance from the past, where the past is seen as a separate world, with an emphasis on differences rather than continuity. Commemorative Ceremonies - Paul Connerton:
• Purpose: Preserve collective memory through formal and repetitive actions.
• Reinforce cultural values and historical narratives using types of re-enactments: Calendrical (annual events like New Year celebrations), verbal (reciting sacred texts or prayers), and gestural (dances, processions, and symbolic acts).

Traumatic Events and Collective Memory

• Impact of Trauma: Traumatic events shape a community's identity and historical consciousness.
• Leads to the creation of memorials, museums, and ceremonies to ensure they are remembered.
• Political Purposes of Memory: Legitimizing authority where leaders use history to justify their rule by connecting it to a revered past.
• Reviving historical events helps build national unity and identity, creating national identity.
• Controlling Memory: Totalitarian regimes control historical narratives to maintain power.
• The document explores how memory and history interact to shape identities, maintain power, and preserve cultural values.

Trouillot: Silencing the Past

• Michel-Rolph Trouillot examines how certain events are marginalized or erased in historical narratives due to biases and power dynamics.
• Introduces "unthinkability," where some events are ignored or downplayed because they challenge dominant worldviews.
• The Haitian Revolution, which took place from 1791 to 1804 in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), had enslaved Africans successfully revolt against French colonial rule and establish Haiti as the first independent Black republic. At the time, the idea of enslaved people overthrowing their oppressors was unimaginable to European and American elites with the result that historians either ignored or distorted this revolution, presenting it as chaotic and violent instead of a legitimate fight for freedom.

Silencing

• Historical Erasure: Omitting or downplaying the Haitian Revolution in textbooks and official histories and treating it as a minor event compared to other revolutions.
• Distortion of Facts: Framing revolution as violent uprisings rather than a coherent struggle for independence and justice.
• Highlighting the violence of the revolutionaries while ignoring the brutality of the colonial regime.
• Colonial Narratives + Economic and Political Interests: Colonial powers had an interest in downplaying the revolution to protect slavery's legitimacy and to avoid inspiring similar uprisings.
• Economic interests played a role, as acknowledging Haiti's success could have threatened the plantation economy and slave trade.
• Racial Prejudices: European historians viewed a Black-led revolution as impossible, reinforcing racist beliefs about the incapacity of Black people for self-governance, leading to the delegitimization of the revolution's leaders and goals.
• Lack of Documentation: records were lost, destroyed, or never created due to the instability and bias of colonial authorities and this lack of documentation was often written by colonial elites who portrayed the revolution negatively.
• Educational Systems: History curricula often exclude or gloss over the Haitian Revolution with emphasis is placed on the American and French Revolutions as the main symbols of freedom and democracy instead.
• Media Representation: Media narratives have historically reinforced colonial perspectives, focusing on violence and chaos rather than the revolution's achievements.
• Modern media still rarely highlight the significance of Haiti's independence as a symbol of anti-colonial resistance.
• How historical narratives are constructed to serve the interests of those in power is revealed through the silencing of the Haitian Revolution as its silencing power dynamics influence which histories are told and which are forgotten.

Kwon: Rethinking Traumas of War

• War trauma has psychological, emotional, and physical injuries from exposure to extreme stressors and violence during armed conflict.
• Affects soldiers, civilians, and entire communities, leading to lasting mental health issues and social consequences.
• The study of war trauma includes post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) including symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and intrusive thoughts about traumatic events, often accompanied by depression, guilt, and emotional numbness.
• War trauma instills fear, helplessness, and horror.
• Survivors grapple with grief over the loss of loved ones and the destruction of their homes and communities, resulting in emotional distress.
• Physical Symptoms: Chronic pain, fatigue, and other stress-related health problems, emerge as the body's prolonged response to trauma.
• Long-term Effects: War trauma affects daily life, relationships, and societal integration; communities experience collective trauma.
• Post-War Commemoration in Vietnam: The immediate post-war years focused on a revolutionary vision, commemorating patriotic sacrifices at cemeteries and memorials dedicated to war martyrs, reinforced narratives of heroism and resilience.

Plurality of Memory

• Since the 1990s, there has been a shift from singling out heroic memory to acknowledge diverse war casualties, while also reviving traditional commemorative rituals while constructing domestic ancestral shrines, family temples, and community halls.
• Vietnamese communities perform rituals to liberate spirits from historical trauma, viewing it as an ethical responsibility of the living to help the dead find peace.
• The Vietnam Heroic Mother Statue honors mothers who lost multiple children in war, symbolizing national sacrifice.
• Grievous Death (Chet Oan) is a reference to violent, unjust deaths that leave souls in perpetual suffering.
• The soul's material part feels physical pain, while its spiritual part retains traumatic memory, leading to post-mortem unrest.
• The study of war trauma sees those living engage in rituals as an ethical duty to help spirits find peace while focusing on commemorative Rituals as Ethical Responsibility.

Maček: Transmission and Transformation

• Focuses on Memories of the Siege of Sarajevo where over three-quarters of Bosnia and Herzegovina's prewar population was displaced and there was a significant loss of life and infrastructure.
• Life was difficult during the Daily Life, with severe shortages of food, water, and electricity and a reliance on black markets and bribery. -A Porous siege allowed limited movement, with dangerous escape attempts and underground tunnels facilitating passage, allowing some Escape & Survival.
• Cut telephone lines and scarce satellite phones communication was hindered contact. Memory Transmission and Transformation:
• Family stories as firsthand narratives from parents are used in transmission. Strong emotions--fear, anger, sadness--are passed down to children, also being parents impact values, like education, resilience, & solidarity.
• Children dramatize and generalize their parents' stories during transformation. Certain details, usually absurd or humorous elements, are lost and parents' anger transforms into children's activism.
• Secondary memory emerges, shaped by indirect and often generic recollections.
• Parents share firsthand experiences, omitting certain elements to shield children.
• Post-war generations struggle to comprehend wartime realities, leading to generalization and dramatization.
• Ethnography is used as both method and product, using participant observation and personal narratives
• This study sees memory shaped by nationalism, refugee experiences, and diaspora communities through both an emphasis on both individual and collective components.

Anh Hua: Diaspora and Cultural Memory

• Diaspora refers to displacing people from their homeland to multiple locations, often retaining collective memory and trauma. Sense of Belonging: Diasporic individuals maintain cultural, emotional, and political ties to their country of origin while adapting to a new environment. Preservation of Identity: Memories, traditions, and language sustain connections to the homeland although pressures to assimilate complicate integration and there are challenges in a systematic racism and socioeconomic struggles in their Host Country.
• Living in a state of "here and there," diasporic individuals constantly navigate their identity and cultural politics
• Diasporic individiuals maintain cultural identity by preserving identity through traditions and languages while resisting assimilation and negotiating dual identities, where they have balance their identities.
• Conclude with the study of war trauma revealing enduring effects of historical violence.