The global/local tension in the history of anthropology

Bibliographic Data

ID7213711
AuthorsG L Ribeiro (0000-0003-0753-960X, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume14
Issue3
Pages375-394
Publication date2019-10-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Global History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1740-0228 • E-ISSN: 1740-0236
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1740022819000172
OpenAlexW2981614521
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited68

In the early days of anthropology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, evolutionism and diffusionism supplied anthropologists with ‘global’ visions. Anthropologists have always been involved with all-encompassing cosmopolitan notions such as humankind and culture. Many have thus endeavoured to explain the world as a whole, and how humans have developed in different historical moments. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the new label ‘globalization’ generated a field of scholarly preoccupations, anthropologists started to contribute to this growing body of literature. Their most valuable contributions are related to the tensions between local and global forces, and between forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity, as well as to the use of ethnography as a methodological tool. Anthropologists have borrowed notions from other related disciplines such as sociology, history, and geography. This paper situates the anthropological production on ‘the global’ within this diverse history of borrowings, internal disciplinary debates, and wider historical junctures

Discipline · Epistemology · Ethnography · Evolutionism · Field (mathematics · Globalization · Historical anthropology · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Vision · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Philosophy