Difference between revisions of "Edward E. Evans-Pritchard" - New World Encyclopedia
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During the Second World War Evans-Pritchard served in Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In the Sudan he raised irregular troops among the Anuak to harrass the Italians and engaged in guerilla warfare. In 1942 he was posted to the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica in North Africa, and it was on the basis of his experience there that he produced ''The Sanusi of Cyrenaica''. In documenting local resistance to Italian conquest, he became one of a few English-language authors to write about the [[tarika]] that some believe to be the predecessors of today's [[radical Islamist]] cults. During the end of the war, in 1944, he converted to [[Roman Catholicism]]. | During the Second World War Evans-Pritchard served in Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In the Sudan he raised irregular troops among the Anuak to harrass the Italians and engaged in guerilla warfare. In 1942 he was posted to the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica in North Africa, and it was on the basis of his experience there that he produced ''The Sanusi of Cyrenaica''. In documenting local resistance to Italian conquest, he became one of a few English-language authors to write about the [[tarika]] that some believe to be the predecessors of today's [[radical Islamist]] cults. During the end of the war, in 1944, he converted to [[Roman Catholicism]]. | ||
| − | The fieldwork he made with both Azande and Nuer gave Evans-Pritchard a good reputation. In his later writings, he turned more toward theoretical exegesis of the relationship between anthropology and other social sciences. In 1950, for example, he famously disavowed the commonly-held view that anthropology was a ''natural science'', arguing instead that it should be grouped amongst the [[humanities]], especially history. He argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation - finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture. | + | The fieldwork he made with both Azande and Nuer gave Evans-Pritchard a good reputation. In his later writings, he turned more toward theoretical exegesis of the relationship between anthropology and other social sciences. |
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| + | He became a knight in 1971, and died in Oxford two years later. | ||
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| + | == Work == | ||
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| + | His early works, especially those he has done among little studied cultures of central Africa - Azande and Nuer, made Evans-Pritchard famous among anthropologists. However, it is his later writings that made him famous outside the anthropologists circles. Much of the principles he used there he draw after his experiences working in the field. In 1950, for example, he famously disavowed the commonly-held view that anthropology was a ''natural science'', arguing instead that it should be grouped amongst the [[humanities]], especially history. | ||
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| + | He argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation - finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture. | ||
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| + | In 1965, he published his seminal work ''Theories of Primitive Religion'', where he argued against the existing theories of primitive religious practices, that dominated antrophological literature up to that time. Such, he claimed that anthropologists rarely succeeded in entering the minds of the people they studied, and so ascribed to them motivations which more closely matched themselves and their own culture, not the one they are studying. On that way antrophologists bias and distort their own theories about other peoples and cultures. | ||
| + | Evans-Pritchard also argued that believers and non-believers approached the study of religion in vastly different ways, with non-believers being more quick to come up with biological, sociological, or psychological theories to explain religion as an illusion, and believers being more likely to come up with theories explaining religion as a method of conceptualizing and relating to reality. For believers religion is a special dimension of the reality. | ||
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== Bibliography == | == Bibliography == | ||
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{{Credit|23097473}} | {{Credit|23097473}} | ||
==Comment== | ==Comment== | ||
This is an unfinished work in progress.—[[User:Jennifer Tanabe|Jennifer Tanabe]] 14:54, 7 Oct 2005 (UTC) | This is an unfinished work in progress.—[[User:Jennifer Tanabe|Jennifer Tanabe]] 14:54, 7 Oct 2005 (UTC) | ||
Revision as of 23:43, 17 October 2005
Life
Sir Edward Evan (E. E.) Evans-Pritchard (born on September 21, 1902; died on September 11, 1973) was a significant figure in the British anthropology, contributed toward the development of the social anthropology in that country. He was professor of social anthropology at Oxford from 1946 to 1970.
Born in Sussex, England, Evans-Prichard studied history at the Exeter College in Oxford, where he bacame familiar with the work of R. R. Marett, famous moral philosopher and historian at the time. As a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics (LSE), Evans-Prichard came under the influence of Bronislaw Malinowski, and especially C. G. Seligman, the founding ethnographer of the Sudanese culture. His first fieldwork began in 1926 with the Azande people of the upper Nile and resulted in both a doctorate (in 1927) and his classic work Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (in 1937). Evans-Pritchard continued to lecture at the LSE and conduct research in Azande land until 1930, when he began new research project among the Nuer people of southern Sudan (The Nuer). He was appointed to the University of Cairo in 1932, where he gave a series of lectures on primitive religion that bore Seligman's influence. It was about this time that he first met Meyer Fortes and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. Evans-Pritchard began developing Radcliffe-Brown's program of structural-functionalism. As a result his trilogy of works on the Nuer (The Nuer, Nuer Religion, and Family and Marriage Among the Nuer) and the volume he coedited entitled African Political Systems came to be seen as classics of British social anthropology.
During the Second World War Evans-Pritchard served in Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In the Sudan he raised irregular troops among the Anuak to harrass the Italians and engaged in guerilla warfare. In 1942 he was posted to the British Military Administration of Cyrenaica in North Africa, and it was on the basis of his experience there that he produced The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. In documenting local resistance to Italian conquest, he became one of a few English-language authors to write about the tarika that some believe to be the predecessors of today's radical Islamist cults. During the end of the war, in 1944, he converted to Roman Catholicism.
The fieldwork he made with both Azande and Nuer gave Evans-Pritchard a good reputation. In his later writings, he turned more toward theoretical exegesis of the relationship between anthropology and other social sciences.
He became a knight in 1971, and died in Oxford two years later.
Work
His early works, especially those he has done among little studied cultures of central Africa - Azande and Nuer, made Evans-Pritchard famous among anthropologists. However, it is his later writings that made him famous outside the anthropologists circles. Much of the principles he used there he draw after his experiences working in the field. In 1950, for example, he famously disavowed the commonly-held view that anthropology was a natural science, arguing instead that it should be grouped amongst the humanities, especially history.
He argued that the main issue facing anthropologists was one of translation - finding a way to translate one's own thoughts into the world of another culture and thus manage to come to understand it, and then to translate this understanding back so as to explain it to people of one's own culture.
In 1965, he published his seminal work Theories of Primitive Religion, where he argued against the existing theories of primitive religious practices, that dominated antrophological literature up to that time. Such, he claimed that anthropologists rarely succeeded in entering the minds of the people they studied, and so ascribed to them motivations which more closely matched themselves and their own culture, not the one they are studying. On that way antrophologists bias and distort their own theories about other peoples and cultures. Evans-Pritchard also argued that believers and non-believers approached the study of religion in vastly different ways, with non-believers being more quick to come up with biological, sociological, or psychological theories to explain religion as an illusion, and believers being more likely to come up with theories explaining religion as a method of conceptualizing and relating to reality. For believers religion is a special dimension of the reality.
Bibliography
Credits
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Comment
This is an unfinished work in progress.—Jennifer Tanabe 14:54, 7 Oct 2005 (UTC)
