Edward E. Evans-Pritchard

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Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (born September 21, 1902 in Crowborough , East Sussex , † September 11, 1973 in Oxford , Oxfordshire ) was a British social anthropologist .

Life

Evans-Pritchard was born the son of an Anglican minister in Crowborough, Sussex . From 1921 to 1924 he studied modern history at Oxford University . He began his anthropological studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he studied with Charles Gabriel Seligman , one of the participants in the famous Cambridge University anthropological expedition to Torres Street . At the same time Bronisław Malinowski began his teaching activity there, and so Evans-Pritchard became one of the first Malinowski students, alongside Raymond Firth , but oriented himself more towards Seligman.

In 1926 Seligman received an order from the British Colonial Office to conduct ethnographic research on the indigenous peoples in what was then Anglo-Egyptian Sudan . However, since he fell ill, Evans-Pritchard took over this task. Based on the results of his first three-month field research with the Azande , Evans-Pritchard obtained his Ph.D. For the next three years he visited the Azande again and again; between these stays he lectured at the LSE.

In 1930, immediately after the British military put down the Nuer uprising in Sudan , Evans-Pritchard began his fieldwork among these people who viewed him as a stranger and even an enemy. Although much of his research was carried out on behalf of the British government, Evans-Pritchard did not undertake espionage assignments but at all times disclosed his goals to the people he researched, lived with, and respected. He saw himself as a kind of mediator between the government and the Nuer.

In 1932 he became a professor at Cairo University , but gave up this position again in 1935 to teach African sociology at Oxford, where he stayed until the outbreak of World War II. During the war he led a guerrilla border war against the Italian-occupied Ethiopia . He served as an officer in Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, and Syria . His research colleague in Sudan, Godfrey Lienhardt , said: "Parts of his own life indeed, as he or more usually others recalled them, had a fictional quality." (Lienhardt 1974, p. 300)

In 1945 he returned to England and, after a year in Cambridge, took over the professorship of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown for Social Anthropology at Oxford, where he remained until his retirement in 1970. In 1956 he was made a member of the British Academy , in 1958 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1968 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1971 he was ennobled .

Evans-Pritchard died on September 11, 1973 in Oxford.

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Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was initially considered a student of British Social Anthropology , from which he later turned away, however, because he was of the opinion that one should put more weight than this on the social history and the social actions of the individual actors .

He conducted field research with the Azande in Sudan (1926-1930 with interruptions), with the Nuer in Sudan (1930/1931/1935), with the Anuak in Ethiopia (1935/1936), with the Sudanese Schilluk and with the Luo in Kenya by.

Evans-Pritchard saw the goal of writing an ethnography that was a complete, coherent, and accurate presentation of the views of tribes and peoples.

Theory of responsibility ( Theory of accountability )

According to Evans-Pritchard, the cultural life of a people can only be understood in relation to the personal experiences of its people.

According to Evans-Pritchard, the anthropological method is that of comparison. The crucial moment to make comparisons is when an accident occurs to the individual. In such situations, one has to consider the ways in which the situation is being handled. People can accuse others, take responsibility themselves, or resort to social customs and invoke supernatural powers.

Damaging magic among the Azande

The Azande 's first association with an accident in any area of ​​life was that someone's magic spell ( witchcraft ) must be responsible for it.

According to Evans-Pritchard, witchcraft is ubiquitous among the Azande. They also know incompetence, careless behavior, breaking taboos or norms and natural processes as causes, whereby the consequences of this misfortune are in turn often related to witchcraft. Unfortunate events never happen by chance: For example, if a storage tank built on wooden stakes, under which people sit, collapses because the termites have eaten it, then the termites are the reason for the collapse of the storage tank. People sat under the storage tank to escape the sun. But the reason for the fact that the granary toppled over at the exact moment when exactly these people were sitting underneath lies in the magic of damage.

The Azande localize the ability to witchcraft as a substance in the liver , this power substance is patrilinear (from father to son) inherited, but does not occur in royal kinship lines ( lineages ).

Evans-Pritchard's concept of human knowledge is based on three principles:

  • Rationality . However, rational thoughts can only occur selectively if they are given attention in a socially possible framework.
  • Selectivity. The principle of selectivity depends on the social demand for responsibility (for responsible actors).
  • Social Patterns of Accountability. They can be recognized through systematic observation and serve as a starting point for a special type of view of reality, each with its own idea of ​​actors who are endowed with special powers.

According to Evans-Pritchard, every society has its own starting points of agreement on morally permissible goals. These structures connect the individuals in society with one another, and they can be perceived in the form of social customs. Identifying such local structures was Evans-Pritchard's goal. Social anthropology determines structured history according to him .

Social anthropology as social history

According to Evans-Pritchard, knowledge of history is necessary in order to be able to experience and understand the political organization of a culture. This also includes history before it was changed by Europeans through colonization.

Social history could therefore serve as a model for social anthropology. In his opinion, there are three levels of anthropological questioning that have parallels in historical methods:

  • The anthropologist tries to understand other societies and translate them (for his society). While anthropology works with direct field research, historical research works on literary sources. However, according to Evans-Pritchard, this is more of a technical than a methodological difference in the scientific exploration of cultures.
  • Anthropologists and historians look for the structural orders of a society, that is, for patterns that enable them to see it as a whole, as a set of interrelated abstractions.
  • The anthropologist compares the social structures of different societies with one another. Historical perspectives with plenty of ethnographic details can serve as a basis.

"Humanistic Anthropology"

Evans-Pritchard was a strong critic of highly abstract theories. In his opinion, it was essential to include both social history and the individual in his research. He was involved in lively discussions, took no dogmatic positions and demanded that his statements be limited to empirically verifiable data .

"It has seemed to me, that anthropologists (include me, if you wish) have, in their writings about Africans societies, dehumanized the Africans into systems and structures and lost the flesh and blood" (Evans-Pritchard 1988 (1950), p . 417).

Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was considered intellectually restless, questioning everything and skeptical.

Works

  • 1937: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande . Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • 1940: The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of A Nilotic People . Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • 1944: A Scientific Theory of Culture
  • 1948: The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  • 1949: The Sanusi of Cyrenaica . Oxford University Press, London
  • 1950: Social Anthropology: Past and Present. In: Man 198 : 118-124
  • 1951: Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer . Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • 1965: Theories of Primitive Religion . Oxford: Clarendon Press (German theories about primitive religion. Translated from the English by Karin Monte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1968)
  • 1967: The Zande Trickster . Oxford: Oxford University Press ( Oxford Library of African Literature )
  • 1971: The Azande: History and Political Institutions . Oxford University Press
  • 1974a: A Bibliography of the Writings of EE Evans-Pritchard. Compiled by EE Evans-Pritchard, amended and corrected by T. Beidelman . London: Tavistick Publications
  • 1974b: Man and Woman among the Azande . New York: The Free Press
  • 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Abridged with an introduction by E. Gillies . Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • Meyer Fortes and Edward E. Evans-Pritchard: 1940. African Political Systems . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

See also

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Evans-Pritchard, Edward E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British social anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Crowborough
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1973
Place of death Oxford