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History, Anthropology and the Study of Communities: Some Problems in Macfarlane's Proposal

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History, Anthropology and the Study of Communities: Some Problems in Macfarlane's Proposal C. J. Calhoun History, anthropology and the study of communities: some problems in Macfarlanes proposal' In a recent paper, Alan Macfarlane advertises a new approach to the study of communities in which 'a combination of the anthropological techniques and the historical material could be extremely fruitful'.2 Unfortunately, he fails to make clear just what the approach he advocates is, and with what problems and phenomena it is intended to deal. He thus exacerbates rather than solves the methodological and conceptual problems which face social historians who would study community. The present paper is primarily polemical in intention. It is in agreement that community can be the object of coherent and productive study by historians and social scientists, working together and/or drawing on the products of each other's labours. It argues, however, that Macfarlane's conceptual apparatus is seriously problematic, and does not constitute a coherent approach. I have outlined elsewhere what I consider to be such a coherent approach.3 It makes community a comparative and historical variable. Macfarlane dismisses the concept as meaningless at the beginning of his paper, but then finds it necessary to reintroduce it in quotation marks in the latter part - without ever defining it. He introduces several potentially useful anthropological concepts, but vitiates their value by both a misleading treatment and the implication that they are replacements for, rather than supplements to, the concept of community. In the following I attempt to give a more accurate background to and interpretation of these concepts, and to correct several logical and methodological errors in Macfarlane's presentation. The various concepts and techniques which he proposes can indeed be meaningful and useful, but require greater attention to level of analysis and theoretical context. I suggest, finally, that the concept of community has not been 'superceded' because it does refer to something we do want to understand. l This paper was written while the author was in have actually had a much longer history of inter- residence at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he relationship than Macfarlane seems to realize, from had the benefit of numerous conversations on its the disciplinary origins of the former, through Evans- subject matter and especially the detailed comments Pritchard among others, to the creation of the 'new of Thomas Laqueur, which he gratefully social history'. acknowledges. 3 See Calhoun in Bibliography. 2 Macfarlane (1977), 637. Anthropology and history 363 364 Social History VOL 3: NO 3 Macfarlanetreats conceptsas holes in the groundto be filled in with data. In the first place, he does not distinguishbetween concepts and propositions.In the secondplace, he does not distinguish between the analytic use of concepts in tackling particular problems,and the mere discoverythat there are data to which a given conceptcan be applied. The result is that, in Macfarlane'sview, historiansare the possessorsof great banks of 'information' and 'material' over which they preside while waiting for 'sociologicalquestions' and 'anthropologicaltechniques'.' The programmewhich he advocatestransgresses the reasonablelimits of naivety5in the borrowingof tools from anotheracademic discipline. It involvesconcepts torn from their theoreticalmoorings, so that they do not even providea coherentlanguage, let alonea majorhelp in analysis. This is largelybecause of two relatederrors, one methodological,one strictlylogical. The logicalerror is the fallaciousassumption that namingis the same as explaining. Thus Macfarlanesuggests a programmeof takingconcepts and then findingdata to fit them. At one point he takes up the concept of the 'action-set'and tells us happilythat Englishcourt records are full of 'case studies',so that' everybaptism, marriage and burial where severalnames are given will give one a fragmentaryaction-set, just as each land transfer, will, or deed likewise does so'.6 Given that most concepts can find some applicationanywhere, this tells us very little. Macfarlanedoes not indicateany problems which the finding of action-setsin court recordswill help us to solve. We are simply told to find action-sets- when we ought to be told to differentiateamong them - find their characteristicform in socialorder, discover how they workor analyseone or more to understandsome importantevent. Macfarlaneis more concerned,however, that we use historicalmaterial 'to test and refinesociological concepts'.7 This is nonsensical,a category mistake. The only way in which concepts can conceivablybe tested is pragmatically;we may evaluatetheir performance in the solutionof particularproblems, the analysisof particularsituations. The methodologicalerror is the neglect of the importanceof asking questions, as opposed to merely proliferatinga method. Macfarlaneproposes, however erratically, a set of tools for historicalresearch. He wishesto select the 'best' fromamong these tools, but he does not considerthat such an evaluationis dependenton application.In other words, a workmanmust select his tools with some task in mind. The way in whichthe historian and/or social scientist chooses and formulates his problems is thus of fundamentalimportance. How he will do so is in largepart the productof the theoretical approachwith which he works, either implicitlyor explicitly.When there is no theory to orderthe selectionand formulationof problems(not to mentiontheir solution), the result is not pure empiricismbut chaos.8Theory is necessaryto provideorder to any 4 Macfarlane(1977), 637, 641- assumptions. None the less, very little of even I Devons and Gluckman (1964). self-proclaimed empiricist history could be done f Macfarlane(0977), 637. without some implicit or ad hocassumptions about the ' Macfarlane (1977), 640. way in which people behave, the nature of social 8 Chronologymay be used to lend a minimal bonds, etc. structurewithout implyingtoo much in the way of OctoberI978 History, anthropology and communities 365 research,and to enableit to penetratebeneath the surfaceof 'facticity'. It providesfor a systematicdefinition of the elementsunder analysis, and a consistenttreatment of their connectionsto eachother. It encapsulatesthe resultsof comparisonsin propositionsabout the connectionsof its elements.Although it must rest on unprovenassumptions, it allows for the testing of propositionswithin its assumptions.An agglomerationof definitions, no matterhow huge, does not makea theory. And conceptswithin a theorytake their meaning, and their utility, not just from formaldefinitions but from their relationship to the theory as a whole. Macfarlaneneglects theory in all the aspectswe have listed. Further, he lifts concepts out of theoreticalcontexts without care even for their relationshipswith each other. Conceptsare designedto aid in analysis,not to substitutefor analysis.Macfarlane in the courseof his papertosses them out by the handful.At one point, he lists four from a commonlineage: 'social drama,case study, quasi-groupand action-set',but does not notice that these are of differentorders.9 The firsttwo describeanalytic procedures, the second two refer to constituentelements. Greaterattention to the context from which the conceptswere borrowedcould have helpedMacfarlane to avoid this confusion.The four conceptslisted abovecome from a relativelyunified approach to problemsof social continuityand change. They are ratherless new, less settled, and less exclusivethan Macfarlanesuggests. The developers of these concepts were seeking solutions to theoretical,methodological and empiricalproblems. Max Gluckmanwas 'pater' to this family of innovators.10The approachwhich he pioneeredin anthropologywas that of identifyingand analysingkey social situationsin orderto understandbetter the overall social order and the directionof its change.11The new approachwas intendedto deal with a numberof problems,many of whichstemmed from structural-functionalist theory. Among these was the tendencyto minimizeconflict, assuming that particularstrife was integratedat a more inclusive level or over a longer duration.The possibilityof both structuralcontradictions and structuralchange due to internalstruggles was neglected. Equilibriumwas assumedto be self-regulating,rather than regulated through the agency of membersof the society. Furthermore,the attentionto functionalintegration meant that the society was treatedas relativelystatic.12 9 Macfarlane ( 1977), 637. (1956). 10 The family is commonly referredto as the 12 Others had certainlyrealized the static impli- 'Manchesterschool'. It includesthe largenumber of cations of structural-functionalanalysis. Radcliffe- anthropologistswho either studied with or were Brownsuggested it as a replacementfor conjectural closely influencedby Gluckmanand his colleagues. history,but as complement,not alternative,to sound The broadly senior generation includes, among historicalargument (the pointis madein manyplaces; others,Turner, Mitchell, Barnes, Colson, Cunnison, the openingpages of his ir4i presidentialaddress are Epstein,Marwick, Worsley, Van Velson, Watson and among the clearest). By the 140os a number of Kapferer. Almost all the group did fieldworkin criticismshad been levelledat the extremefunction- centraland/or southern Africa. Lusaka,because of alism of Malinowski,including several by leading the Rhodes-LivingstonInstitute (now Institute of anthropologistswho were in later yearsto be tarred AfricanStudies in the Universityof Zambia)was with the same brush: Evans-Pritchard,Fortes,
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