Short Abstract:

This Roundtable will discuss the possibilities for an Anthropology of History network. While anthropologists have long recognised that ‘history is cultural’, there are under-addressed social processes of historical experience, historicities, memory, and heritage.

Long Abstract:

Starting from the premise that ‘history is cultural’ (Sahlins 1984), this Roundtable will open a discussion space to explore the possibilities of an Anthropology of History towards a new EASA network. We propose it is necessary to develop a network that addresses an anthropology of history and historicities (i.e., ways to understand and experience time and temporality) in ethnographic and anthropological research. This might include (but is not limited to):

The analysis and description of local forms of historicity that do not conform exclusively to standards of Western historiography

Giving attention to how experiences of space/time and the relationships between past, present and future, are socially produced

Challenging the dominance of European/Enlightenment models of history-making toward provincializing European historicism in ethnography

Decolonizing mainstream narratives about time and temporalities both within and beyond Europe

Exploring the political dimensions of heritage and intangible heritage, museums, archives, and material culture

This Roundtable is an opportunity to map different voices and perspectives. It will identify the scope and potential for anthropological approaches to history, history making and historicities (Hirsch & Stewart 2005). The Roundtable will introduce these themes prior to an open meeting to discuss setting up a new network which will provide opportunities to collaborate on research that considers registers of temporality alternative to and/or co-present with dominant Western empirical historicism. This Roundtable asks what a manifesto for an Anthropology of History might look like today.