Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Grand Narratives are once again in vogue: they seem to have become the preferred method for popularizing social sciences. This communication will present this prolific field of "Grand Narratives", the various debates it encompasses, and situate the contributions of anthropologists to these debates.

Paper long abstract

The disappearance of the East-West ideological polarization after the Cold War, along with the questioning of the narrative of humanity's endless progress, has led to the idea that the "Grand Narratives" of modernity have lived (and with them, the conflicts that shape history, cf Fukuyama). Grand Narratives are once again in vogue: they seem to have become the preferred method for popularizing syntheses of social sciences according to a narrative framework that involves returning to the origin in order to unfold a step-by-step narrative (Diamond, Harari, Pinker being the most visible). Anthropologists initially criticized these brief narratives of humanity, objecting to flawed conceptions—regarding primitive peoples, the innateness of humankind, and the anthropocentrism of the perspectives. Than they have "entered the arena" not (only) to debate, but to establish alternative origin narratives while drawing on the literature produced by the discipline (Scott, Graeber & Wengrow, Stepanoff, Vaissière, etc.).

The aim of this communication will be to present this prolific field of "Grand Narratives", the debates it encompasses (innate / socially constructed; weight of the biological / freedom; security / creativity; focus on the singularity of the species / focus on the cosmological narrative) and to situate the contributions of anthropologists to these debates.