Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
11 - What does anthropology contribute to world history?
from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
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Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
Summary
World history and anthropology are in fact not so distant as was once thought. Historians are trained to examine written documents; their work is in the library rather than the field, that is, with reports of what has happened rather than undertaking first-hand observation, although the category 'oral history' has rather blurred this issue, since history normally involves written records, not oral accounts. Many aspects of contemporary life clearly began in the Bronze Age. Writing, metals, urban society, 'civilization', the religions of conversion, especially the monotheistic ones, and all that they implied. But humankind had existed long before and it was both this long durée of oral cultures and the relatively rapid change with literacy that world history aims to emphasize. One virtue of anthropology for world history is that it considers preliterate societies not simply in a mass as 'primitive', waiting for the advent of civilization that they were unable to achieve themselves.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History , pp. 261 - 276Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
Further reading
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