Historical Ethnography and Peasant Societies
Historical Ethnography and Peasant Societies: McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch is a collection of interviews that is being published as a book for the first time. These interviews have been conducted by a leading British social anthropologist and historian, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of several years, the three conversations in this volume are a part of the series Creative Lives and Works. These transcriptions cut across various disciplines, from the social sciences and the sciences to the performing and visual arts. The current volume is on three of the world’s most eminent sociologists and anthropologists – McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch.
These interviews extend the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, moving on from when fieldwork was somewhat limited to the concentration of a civilization or community’s past, and how it fits within the historical context of the discipline. Since then, it has expanded to one where peasant cultures and communities have become the focal point of study.
McKim Marriott, James Scott and Maurice Bloch talk about both overcoming and understanding the importance of fieldwork—considering linguistic, historical, economic and cultural elements in the study of these societies through their engaging conversations and occasional anecdotes. Immensely riveting as conversations, this collection gives a flavour of the many different societies and cultures in far-flung reaches of the world encompassing several continents, often with no knowledge of each other’s existence, and of how expansive the disciple of sociology and social anthropology is.
The book will be of enormous value not just to those interested in the subject of Sociology, Social Anthropology and Ethnography, but also to those with an avid interest in History, Culture Studies as well as those with a general interest in learning about other societies.
Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan).
Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities where he received two Master's degrees and two doctorates. He is the author of over forty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Professor Macfarlane received the Huxley Memorial Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2012.