Lecture given at AUK department of Social and Behavioral Sciences - The French School - Part 2. Dynamic Anthropology, Balandier and the colonial situation

1. SBSA 389 SPECIAL
TOPICS
THE HISTORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
THEORY
FALL 2020 ELEARNING
Week Eight: The French School
Dec 7, 9 2020
PART 2.
DYNAMIC
ANTHROPOLOG
Y

2. how can a society encompass phenomena of permanence and
change at the same time?
Evolutionism
•Historicist vision
•Unilinear
classification
•Degrees of
progress towards
« civilization »
Difusionism
Geographic vision
Focus on the
moment of
observation
Functionalism
Ahistoricist vision
Causal
mechanisms
between social
institutions
Structuralism
Ahistoricist vision
Structure
Events

3. STRUCTURALIST AHISTORICIST VISION
OF SOCIETIES
Synchrony
• Observation of
small-scale facts
(events)
• Present time
Diachrony
• historical
understanding of a
fact

4. Cold
societies
Of tradition
Avoid changes
Slow history
Degree zero of
historical
temperature
Hot
societies
Of modernity
In search of
changes
Yet structured
by universal
underlying
patterns
B O R O R O I N D I A N S I N A M A Z O N I A ,
( L É V I - S T R A U S S , T R I S T E S
T R O P I Q U E S )
 Durkheim’s concept
of anomie

5. AFRICAN
INDEPENDENC
E TIMELINE

6. DYNAMIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Develop a theory
that comprises
the notion of
change
01
Make ethnology
aware of its
colonial past
02
Observe the
consequences
of colonialism
on societies
03

7. MAKE ETHNOLOGY AWARE OF ITS COLONIAL PAST?
18th > early 20th:
Colonial ethnology
• Explorations, religious
missions and
colonization
• To help colonial
administrations
1920s
• Ethnology becomes an
academic discipline
• British Radcliffe-Brown;
Meyer Fortes; Evans-
Pritchard
1950s
•Times of
decolonization
•French Balandier,
Bastide, Leiris, Rouch
•British Gluckman:
conflict theory

8. GEORGES
BALANDIER
(1920-2016)

9. DYNAMIC
ANTHROPOLOGY
A society is not a stable
set of phenomena
History shapes and
modifies a society
Crises are an indicator of
definite social relations
Crises reveal relations of
power and domination

10. THE NOTION OF « COLONIAL SITUATION »
Film: Mad Masters, Jean Rouch
Acculturation: « A phenomena resulting from direct
and continuous contacts between groups of
individuals of different cultures » Redfield and Linton,
1936
Colonial situation: « A form of domination imposed
by an ethnically or culturally different, foreign minority,
in the name of an ethnic or cultural superiority, upon a
matierally inferior autochtone majority »
Imposition of a
system on a
society
Influence of this
imposition on
cultural practices
Asymmetry of
contacts

11. THE NOTION OF « COLONIAL
SITUATION »
A phenomena of
acculturation
Imposition of a system on a society
Influence of this imposition on cultural
practices
Asymmetry of contacts
A relation of domination
A small group of dominants (colonizers)
A numerically bigger dominated group
(colonized)
Both group have a capacity of action
A permanent process of change and
adaptation

12. CHANGE, CONTINUITY, TRADITION & MODERNITY
Tradition
Focus on continuity
Modernity
Focus on
transformations
Critique:
• This distinction is not
enough to understand
a society
• Western vision of
history as a linear
process
• It is a way of thinking,
not a reality
Proposition:
• The capacity of
adaptation is the
central value of a
society
• A society is the
contraction of change
and continuity

13. WHAT
« TRADITION »
IS
A social
function
A form of resistance
Identity-giving function
Secure-feeling / Reassuring
function
Definition
oA symbolic reference to the
past
oA social construction
“Tradition is a "language" that
gives meaning to novelty or to
formulate reactions provoked by
novelty.”
(Balandier, Political Anthropology,
p.18)

14. MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY
• Materialism: History and societies are determined by economic
conditions
Repartition/
circulation
of goods
Productive
forces
Mode of
production
Example: capitalist
model, communist
model, Asian model…

15. or economic infrastructure

16. LINKS AND REFERENCES
Georges Balandier, The Sociology of Black Africa (full text online). URL: http://ole.uff.br/wp-
content/uploads/sites/16/2017/05/1-BALANDIER-Georges.-The-sociology-of-black-Africa-Social-
dynamics-in-central-Africa-Deutsch-1970.pdf
Short film Mad Masters, Jean Rouch:
 (English text): https://vimeo.com/225816862
 (Full video, French): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCl-5nKYkTI
Short article on « Black art »: Museums Matter in the Current Climate of Anti-Black Racism, online.
URL: https://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/03/20/museums-matter-in-the-current-climate-
of-anti-black-racism/
The « colonial situation » in psychology:
• Frantz Fanon, White Skin, Black Masks
• Octave Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization