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Deposited in DRO: 29 November 2013 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Mughal, M. A. Z. (2013) 'Bloch, Maurice.', in Theory in social and cultural : an encyclopedia. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, pp. 77-80. Further information on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452276311.n27

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Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Bloch, Maurice 77 important throughout 20th-century anthropology. exchange. He is among the pioneers of the French Examples include ’s biography of a Marxist tradition in British anthropology. Puerto Rican migrant worker, Oscar Lewis’s life histories of Mexican families, and Ruth Behar’s life Biography and Major Works of a Mexican market woman. Barbara Myerhoff pioneered dialogical life writing, intertwining her Bloch was born in 1939 in , . He had a telling of the life of a Jewish American immigrant mixed family background as his great-grandfather tailor with reflections about her own relationship was a miller from Lorraine while his grandmoth- to Judaism. To write about the lives of Yukon er’s family were Sephardic Jews, originally from aboriginal women, Julie Cruikshank experimented Portugal, who lived in Bordeaux. His mother’s with writing oral forms of storytelling. Serving as mother was a niece of Émile Durkheim as well as scribes of marginalized lives, Nancy Scheper-Hughes a first cousin of . Bloch had a chance has narrated the lives of mothers in a Brazilian shan- to meet Mauss near the end of Mauss’s life. During tytown who delay bonding with newborns, and World War II, Bloch’s father was arrested and killed Philippe Bourgois has recorded the narratives of by the Nazis, and his mother, a marine biologist, crack dealers in Harlem. was held in Auschwitz along with other scientists Finally, the critical reflexivity of postcolonial and forced to do laboratory research for the Nazis. anthropology has renewed interest in biography. To Bloch was protected by one of his father’s friends transcend self/other dichotomies, phenomenologi- during this period. After the war, his mother married cal approaches focus on lived experience, and eth- John S. Kennedy, a British biologist. nography locates once others as subjects—placing Bloch attended Lycée Carnot in but moved in relation to, not outside, their to Britain at the age of 11 along with his parents object of study. In the 21st century, as anthropology and joined the Perse School in Cambridge. At the seeks new knowledge through collaboration and Perse, he was inspired by his history teacher John cotheorizing, life writing as reflexive practice is key Tanfield and by Douglas Brown, who taught him to its realization. English literature. He also developed an interest in classical music, with Olivier Messiaen and Benjamin Sally Cole Britten being among his favorites. He entered the See also Autoethnography; Boas, Franz; Bourdieu, Pierre; School of Economics to study anthropology Firth, Raymond; Mead, Margaret; Mintz, Sidney; as an undergraduate, where he was inclined toward Scheper-Hughes, Nancy; Steward, Julian Maurice Freedman and Burton Benedict, who worked on the cultures of China, and Mauritius and Seychelles, respectively. During this period, he was Further Readings also inspired by Mary Douglas at University College Cole, S. (2003). Ruth Landes: A life in anthropology. London and Adrian Mayer at the School of Oriental Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. and African Studies, where he had gone to study Gordon, R., Lyons, A. P., & Lyons, H. D. (Eds.). (2011). linguistics. In addition to academics, he also acted Fifty key anthropologists. London, UK: Routledge. in plays, usually French, at the university. Bloch was Kerns, V. (2003). Scenes from the high desert: Julian also involved in politics during his time at univer- Steward’s life and theory. Urbana: University of Illinois sity, supporting the anticolonial struggles in Algeria, Press. India, and China. After completing his undergradu- Lutkehaus, N. C. (2008). Margaret Mead: The making of ate studies in 1961, he went to France to oppose the an American icon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Algerian and Vietnam wars. Press. Bloch attended Cambridge University for his PhD, initially working with and the French Germaine Dieterlen. Bloch BLOCH, MAURICE was interested in working in India due to his ear- lier inspiration from Adrian Mayer’s work, but his Maurice Bloch (1939– ) has worked mainly in funding required that he work in Africa, and he religion, , power, cognition, and economic decided to work in . He conducted his 78 Bloch, Maurice field research in Madagascar from 1964 to 1966. Currently, Bloch is emeritus professor at the LSE Initially, Bloch carried out his research under the and an associate member of the supervision of Audrey Richards, who had experi- of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In addi- ence working with sub-Saharan African communi- tion to the many students he has supervised, his writ- ties. At a later stage, he was supervised by Stanley ings have been translated into at least 12 different Jeyaraja Tambiah, a specialist on Thailand and languages. Sri Lanka. Bloch also had a chance to discuss his work with other pioneering social anthropologists at Critical Contributions to Anthropology Cambridge like and Raymond Firth. Caroline Humphrey, Marilyn Strathern, Andrew Bloch has published books in both French and Strathern, Adam Kuper, Jim Faris, and Jonathan English and more than 100 articles relating to , Parry were among his fellow PhD students. power, kinship, economics, religion, and money. Bloch completed his PhD in 1967. His doctoral the- French Marxism and Structuralism sis, The Significance of Tombs and Ancestral Villages in British Anthropology for Merina Social Organization, focused on the tombs and kinship organization in Madagascar and was Although Bloch was educated in the British later published by Seminar Press as Placing the Dead: anthropological traditions, he has long been con- Tombs, Ancestral Villages and Kinship Organization nected with French Marxist movements. On the in Madagascar. He was a lecturer at the University one hand, he was interested in the structuralism of Wales, Swansea, in 1967 and 1968, but in 1969, of Claude Lévi-Strauss, while on the other, he was he accepted a lectureship at the London School of influenced by several French Marxist writers with Economics, where his colleagues were Maurice whom he had personal relations, including Maurice Freedman, Lucy Mair, Jean La Fontaine, Ioan Lewis, Godelier and Emmanuel Terray. Bloch organized a and Peter Loizos. Bloch developed friendships with session at the conference of the Association of Social and Olivia Harris, who were graduate stu- Anthropologists in 1973, in which French Marxists dents at the LSE at that time. In 1970, Bloch moved and British anthropologists discussed various theo- to the University of California at Berkeley, where he retical interests. He tried to use the approaches of became interested in the work of linguists and of phi- Marxist anthropology and Lévi-Strauss’s struc- losophers such as John Searle, leading him to study turalism alongside the then dominant paradigms cognitive sciences. Not comfortable in the United in Britain, like methodological individualism and States because of his Marxist links in France, Bloch structural functionalism. The influence of Lévi- returned to the LSE, where he continued to work on Strauss is particularly strong in Placing the Dead, language and cognition. His article “Symbols, Song, where Bloch interpreted kinship organization as a Dance and Features of Articulation” (1974), on the schema of elementary structures. Anthropologists criticism of semantics, has been widely read. have different responses toward Marxism and Bloch returned to Berkeley in 1974–1975, where Marxist analyses depending on the traditions they he was influenced by cognitive anthropologists were trained in or the communities they have been such as George Lakoff and Paul Kay. He was vis- working with, as Bloch demonstrated in his detailed iting professor at the Johns Hopkins University in description of Marxist analysis, Marxist Analyses Baltimore and the New School for Social Research and (1975), and in Marxism in New York, but since 1976, his career has been and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship almost entirely at the LSE, where he was promoted (1983). Marxist tradition was declining in France to Reader in 1976. Bloch has also taught and has when Bloch was initially working through a French been an occasional visiting professor at Paris West Marxist approach in British anthropology. However, University Nanterre La Défense, University of Bloch persisted in a Marxist approach in his work Stockholm, and National Museum of on the representation of money and economic Japan, among others. He was appointed as full pro- exchange, particularly in his book Money and the fessor at the LSE in 1983 and elected a fellow of the Morality of Exchange, coedited with Jonathan in 1990. Parry, and the article “Zafimaniry Debt and Credit.” Bloch, Maurice 79

Ritual and Power in Madagascar evolution of religion alongside technological or cul- tural development primarily for social bonding. Bloch worked with two communities in Madagascar: a rice cultivating peasant community in Cognition, Memory, and Culture central Imerina and the forest people of Zafimaniry. In Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages and Bloch developed an interest in studying language Kinship Organization in Madagascar, Bloch pre- and cognition at a very early stage during the time sented the reinterpretive power of rituals in relation he spent at Berkeley. In that era, due to the works of to ancestral tombs in central Imerina. Later in 1983, scholars such as George Lakoff and Noam Chomsky, in Death and the Regeneration of Life, a volume of new dimensions in linguistics and cognitive psychology essays he coedited with Jonathan Parry, he discusses were being studied. Bloch’s interest in child develop- the role of women in funerary practices, in particu- ment also drew him closer to psychologists like Susan lar the dominant role of women in mourning and Carey, , and Paul Harris. Bloch wrote death rituals. Although Bloch worked on various Political Language, Oratory, and Traditional Society topics ranging from linguistics to cognition and from in 1975, which is considered one of the landmark money to morality, the study of rituals, religion, and books on political language in non-Western cultures. power has been the focus of most of his works. In Many anthropologists focus on the role of culture From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in in studying language, while psychologists give pri- the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar mary importance to cognition and memory. Bloch, (1986), Bloch offered a concrete and influential neo- however, tried to balance the role in both disciplines Marxist theory of ritual and power. He describes that, of culture and cognition in understanding language. on the one hand, the circumcision ritual starts with He has dealt with memory and cognition from a blessings from God but ends with symbolic and physi- variety of theoretical and methodological perspec- cal violence and, on the other, at times, it symbolizes tives. In “The Past and the Present in the Present” the mystic transmission of the moral identity from (1977), Bloch examined the cultural as well as the descent group and then is used to legitimize and the cognitive aspects of language while studying celebrate the dominance of one group of Merina over the temporal expressions of memory. In 1991, in other Merina or non-Merina groups. He developed “Language, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science,” this theory further in Ritual, History and Power: he advocated interdisciplinary approaches in the social and cognitive sciences. Essays on Cultural Selected Papers in Anthropology (1989). As a further Transmission (2005) was another provocative development in his approach toward ritual and vio- work because of its call for a partnership between lence, he synthesized a radical theory of religion in anthropology and cognitive psychology. In his Prey Into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience recent works, like The Blob (2011) and Reconciling in 1992, interpreting rituals as a denial of the tran- Social Science and Cognitive Science Notions of the sience of life and human institutions through sacrifice. “Self” (2010), Bloch reasserted this position. Bloch’s Bloch published several articles, like “‘Eating’ Young approach, particularly in the studies of rituals, lan- Men Among the Zafimaniry,” to further explain his guage, and cognition, has had a continuing influence ideas on power, rituals, and violence. in different domains of anthropological queries. Bloch continuously used a historical approach of studying rituals and religion. In his article “Why Muhammad Aurang Zeb Mughal Religion Is Nothing Special but Is Central” (2008), Bloch challenged the popular notion in anthropol- See also Cambridge University; ; ogy that religion evolved as it promoted social bond- Godelier, Maurice; Lévi-Strauss, Claude; London ing. He, instead, stressed that the development of School of Economics; Marxist Anthropology; Structuralism brain architecture and power to imagine nonexistent things and beings transformed the nature of soci- ety, including religion. His stance was debated in Further Readings anthropological as well as other intellectual spheres, Bloch, M. Interview by Alan Macfarlane on 29th May since many anthropologists have been stressing the 2008 (S. Harrison, Ed.). DSpace at Cambridge, 80 Bloomfield, Leonard

University of Cambridge. Retrieved from http://www Introduction to the Study of Language, published in .dspace.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/1810/198365/1/bloch.txt 1914, and the much longer Language, published in Boden, M. A. (2006). Mind as machine: A history of 1933; the latter work is still in print, and its account cognitive science (Vol. 2, p. 526). Oxford, UK: of processes in historical linguistics was long taken Clarendon Press. as the best introduction to the field. Bloomfield’s Houtman, G. (1988). Interview with Maurice Bloch. earlier work reflects his interest in the psychological Anthropology Today, 4(1), 18–21. theories of Wilhelm Wundt; his later philosophical Kaaristo, M. (2008). The reluctant anthropologist: An position was less dogmatic, and he showed much interview with Maurice Bloch. Eurozine. Retrieved from interest in behaviorism as posited by A. P. Weiss. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008–02–28-bloch-en Bloomfield’s cautiousness about describing the .html semantics or system of meaning of a language with Kuper, A. (1983). Anthropology and anthropologists: the same degree of scientific rigor as its grammati- The modern British school. London, UK: Routledge & cal structure was often misunderstood by critics as Kegan Paul. perpetuating an antimentalist view of language, in which semantics was excluded. This was not the case. He spent much time putting his ideas to practi- BLOOMFIELD, LEONARD cal effect, employing linguistic methods in attempts to enable English-speaking children to learn to read Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) was an American effectively. pioneer of structural linguistics. Bloomfield came His Austronesian works are few, principally from a high-achieving intellectual family of Austrian comprising some work on Ilocano of the northern Jewish origin and grew up in the hotel business. He Philippines and a collection of texts, with gram- was educated at Harvard and first specialized in matical description and glossary, of Manila Tagalog. Germanic languages, writing about Germanic sec- Like the Ilocano sketch, this was based on fieldwork ondary ablaut for his PhD. He continued to work with a consultant, in this latter case a trainee archi- on these topics through his career, teaching German tect at the University of Chicago, who dictated these at the University of Illinois, later teaching Germanic texts to Bloomfield, and it achieves the linguistic philology at Ohio State University and the University ideal of descriptive adequacy because the use and of Chicago, sometimes writing articles in German, sense of every form found in the text is accounted and writing a textbook of Dutch (Bloomfield, 1944). for and every feature of the grammar of the lan- He was later to turn his flair for practical linguis- guage attested in the text is explained. As a model of tics to the U.S. war effort, producing a textbook descriptive work, it has few equals. and a grammatical sketch of Russian for the Army From the 1920s, Bloomfield did much work on Specialist Training Program. He taught for most of the Algonquian languages of Canada and the Great his career at the University of Chicago, moving to Lakes, producing an impressive collection of work, Yale as Sterling Professor in 1940. Bloomfield wrote including texts, grammar, and dictionary materi- the Call, the academic proclamation that led to the als, on Menominee, the Native American language founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1925, once spoken around Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, publishing the first article in its journal Language. where he had grown up (until then it had barely A paralyzing stroke in 1946 ended his career; and he been documented). His major work on this subject died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1949. His stu- is The Menomini Language, which was published in dent Bernard Bloch published Bloomfield’s obituary 1962, 13 years after his death. Bloomfield also vis- in the journal Language in 1949. ited Saskatchewan, collecting two volumes of texts Cautious, reserved, uncharismatic but kindly (and of Plains Cree, which he published in 1934. His with a whimsical and occasionally scabrous sense 1958 study of an idiolect of eastern Ojibwe, Eastern of humor), Bloomfield made quiet but massive con- Ojibwa: Grammatical Sketch, Texts and Word tributions to general linguistics, and Austronesian List, ranks with his Tagalog work as an intellec- and Americanist linguistics, all written in immedi- tual accomplishment of high descriptive adequacy. ately comprehensible prose. His work in general Bloomfield also did secondary work on the con- linguistics includes two introductions to the field, An servative Algonquian language Fox (Mesquakie),