Convenors:
Eric Hirsch,
Brunel University
Charles Stewart,
University College London
The realisation
that the historical dimension of societies cannot be neglected has prompted
anthropologists to make the 'historical turn'. They may have turned too quickly, however, without checking
their understanding of 'history' or examining comparable ideas about the
categories of historicity, historical consciousness, or historicization, more
generally, in the societies they study. This panel invites contributions
offering conceptual clarification through ethnographic contextualisation. The
modern, conventional understanding of history in Western societies is a factual
narrative about the past composed according to rational principles. This
conventional understanding poses history as an explicit domain of human
existence. However, it cannot be assumed that all societies necessarily
construe knowledge about the past in this manner. Although historicity is
common to all societies - a (social) past that informs the present and
constrains the conditions for future possibilities - the response to it is variable.
Under what conditions (e.g. colonialism, missionization) do representations of
the past emerge which are locally recognised as 'historical' or 'history'; or
perhaps these representations are a given in all societies? What form does this
'history' take: as distinctive narratives and/or as non-linguistic ritual,
music, dance, sculpture, visions, possessions, or as places and landscapes?
Significantly, then, what are the connections between historicity and history -
how does one affect the other? The panel invites all manner of ethnographic
presentations which seek to conceptually clarify the use and the limits of the
notion of 'history' by anthropologists and by the people they study.
Experience,
Emotion and the Formation of Historical Consciousness Among the Banabans in
Fiji
Elfriede
Hermann, University of Göttingen
Elfriede.Hermann@phil.uni-goettingen.de
Conceptions of
History and Political Institutions: Views from Tokelau and New Zealand
Ingjerd Hoem, Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo
Ethnographies of Historicity in Creole Societies:
Examples from Indonesia and Sierra Leone
Jacqueline
Knörr, Max Planck
Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale
Yvon
Csonka, University of Greenland
Gheorghita
Geana, University of Bucharest
gheorghita_geana2003@yahoo.com
Town-Twinning in
Greece: An Experience of Recognizing ‘History’ as a Domain of
Practice
Eleni Papagaroufali, Panteion University, Athens
Healing History: Encounter and
Appropriation in Anglo-Protestant Self-Representation
Pamela Klassen,
University of Toronto and University of Tübingen
Helen
Cornish, Goldsmiths College, London