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"Bloch, Maurice"
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Anthropology and the cognitive challenge
\"In this provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that an understanding of cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists. Maurice Bloch argues for a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, introducing developments in cognitive sciences such as psychology and neurology and exploring the relevance of these developments for central anthropological concerns: the person or the self, cosmology, kinship, memory and globalisation. Opening with an exploration of the history of anthropology, Bloch shows why and how naturalist approaches were abandoned and argues that these once valid reasons are no longer relevant. Bloch then shows how such subjects as the self, memory and the conceptualisation of time benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge will stimulate fresh debate among scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Why religion is nothing special but is central
It is proposed that explaining religion in evolutionary terms is a misleading enterprise because religion is an indissoluble part of a unique aspect of human social organization. Theoretical and empirical research should focus on what differentiates human sociality from that of other primates, i.e. the fact that members of society often act towards each other in terms of essentialized roles and groups. These have a phenomenological existence that is not based on everyday empirical monitoring but on imagined statuses and communities, such as clans or nations. The neurological basis for this type of social, which includes religion, will therefore depend on the development of imagination. It is suggested that such a development of imagination occurred at about the time of the Upper Palaeolithic 'revolution'.
Journal Article
Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge
This provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that an understanding of cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists. Maurice Bloch argues for a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, introducing developments in cognitive sciences such as psychology and neurology and exploring the relevance of these developments for central anthropological concerns: the person or the self, cosmology, kinship, memory and globalisation. Opening with an exploration of the history of anthropology, Bloch shows why and how naturalist approaches were abandoned and argues that these once valid reasons are no longer relevant. Bloch then shows how such subjects as the self, memory and the conceptualisation of time benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge will stimulate fresh debate among scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines.
eBook
In and Out of Each Other's Bodies
What is human sociality? How are universals such as truth and doubt variously demonstrated and negotiated in different cultures? This book offers an accessible introduction to these and other fundamental human questions. Bloch shows that the social consists of two very different things. One is a matter of continual adjustments between individuals who read each others' minds and thus, as in sex and birth, \"go in and out of each other's minds and bodies.\" The other is a time defying system of roles and groups. Interaction at this level is created by ritual and is unique to humans. What is referred to by the word \"religion\" is a part of this, but it is not separate. The study of \"religion\" as such is therefore theoretically misleading. A second major theme is the way truth is established in different cultures. Bloch's arguments go against recent approaches in anthropology which have sought to relativize ideas of the social and religion.
eBook
Imagination from the Outside and from the Inside
In this paper, I consider the problems and advantages of combining the traditional subdisciplines of anthropology, especially the problem of combining studies that attempt to interpret and represent the “from the inside” point of view of a particular group of people, a practice typical of ethnography, with the more scientific approach that ultimately attempts to study our species and its evolution, inevitably “from the outside” of the particular point of view of any culture or society. I focus on imagination. Imagination “from the outside” seems a feature of human cognition, but a particular use of this capacity means that human beings can create apparently stable institutional structures. “From the inside,” the idea that the social system, which in the case considered by and large equals the kinship system, is imaginary would seem false. Yet if we look at the representations we find in rituals such as initiation or ideas about incest, we find locals’ ideas not at all incommensurate with those of the scientists. Again, if we look at the scientists’ understanding of what motivates people in specific places, we find that they need to imagine a “from the inside” environment.
Journal Article
Anthropology is an odd subject: Studying from the outside and from the inside
This essay considers the contribution that social and cultural anthropology can make to other disciplines. This contribution is of two sorts. First, anthropology offers a glimpse of what society may have been like for most of human history when the state and its invading presence are absent. Such knowledge cannot be obtained directly but studying communities where the state is remote does give a flavor of what such life is like. Second, anthropology has developed a method of studying others through participation. This method is apparently deceptively straightforward but, nonetheless, it has profound theoretical implications. It is based on the recognition that we can only know those people who at first seem different by sharing what is implicitly involved as they go about their normal life.
Journal Article
Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology
Reflecting the first evaluation among British and American anthropologists of the relevance of Marxist theory for their discipline, the studies in this volume cover a wide geographical and social spectrum ranging from rural Indonesia, Imperial China, Highland Burma and the Abron kingdom of Gyaman. A critical survey assesses the value of some key ideas of Marx and Engels to social anthropology and places in historical perspective the changing attitudes of social anthropologists to the Marxist tradition. Originally published in 1975.
eBook
Durkheimian anthropology and religion
Emile Durkheim's work has always been criticized for reifying the social and situating it in an indeterminate zone between actors' consciousness and positive facts. +Superscript 1 -Superscript In this chapter, however, I am not concerned with exploring whether this criticism of the founder of French sociology's work is justified. My purpose instead is to show that it is possible to retain some aspects of Durkheim's conclusions about the nature of religion and of the social with types of argument quite different from those he employed. My framework here is that of modern evolutionary natural science and recent understandings of the specificities of the human mind/brain.
Journal Article
