Research Catalog

Title

The anthropological lens : rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard / Christopher Morton.

Author

Morton, Christopher A.

Publication

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 226 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged. This book then is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard's theoretical contributions to the0discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard's anthropology.

Subjects

• Ethnology
• Ethnologists
• Anthropology
• Photography in anthropology
• Ethnology > Great Britain > History > 20th century
• Ethnology > South Sudan
• Anthropology > Fieldwork
• History
• 1900-1999
• South Sudan
• Ethnologists > Great Britain > History > 20th century
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E (Edward Evan), 1902-1973
• Great Britain

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Photographs are to think with: historicizing anthropology -- Survivals, surveys, and struggles: first fieldwork -- Visuality and textuality: encountering Zande ritual -- Double alienation: fieldwork and photography between two worlds -- Image, archive, and monograph: dangerous liaisons -- Akobo realism: conversations with the Anuak -- The participant-photographer: encountering Nuer ritual -- The poet, the missionary, and the sacred spears.

Call Number

Sc E 20-665

ISBN

• 0198812914
• 9780198812913

OCLC

1101973338

Author

Morton, Christopher A., author.

Title

The anthropological lens : rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard / Christopher Morton.

Publisher

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

Sc E 20-665