Alan Macfarlane

Biographic Data

ID80618
NAMEAlan Macfarlane
GIVEN NAMESAlan
FAMILY NAMEMacfarlane
SIGNATUREMACFARLANE A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Cambridge
ORCID0000-0002-8766-3434
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS110
TOTAL CITATIONS420
AUTHOR COUNT109
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1970
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX12

  • Memories of Andre Béteille

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneARTICLESocial Change2026

  • A History of Oxford Anthropology

    Jonathan Benthall, John Davis et al.BOOKHistory of Oxford Anthropology2022Cited by: 2

    List of Figures List of Contributors Preface Introduction Peter Riviere Chapter 1. Origins and Survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their Role within Anthropology in Oxford 1883-1905 Christopher Gosden, Frances Larson and Alison Petch Chapter 2. The Formative Years: the Committee for Anthropology 1905-38 Peter Riviere Chapter 3. How All Souls got its Anthropologist John Davis Chapter 4. A Major Disaster to Anthropology? Oxford…

  • Creative Lives and Works: Adrian C. Mayer, M.N. Srinivas, André Béteille and Johnathan Parry

    Alan Macfarlane, Jack Goody et al.BOOKCreative Lives and Works2021

  • Creative Lives and Works: Adrian C. Mayer, M. N. Srinivas, André Béteille and Johnathan Parry

    Alan Macfarlane, Jack GoodyBOOKCreative Lives and Works2021

  • Adrian C. Mayer

    Alan Macfarlane, Jack Goody et al.CHAPTERCreative Lives and Works2021

    Emeritus Professor Adrian Mayer was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) after almost 30 years at the School. He joined SOAS in 1956, and was the first Chair of the South Asia Centre where he held the Chair of Asian Anthropology, later holding roles as Head of Department and finally Pro-Director before retiring in 1985. Professor Mayer first went to India during the Second World War as a member of the Fr…

  • Anthropology and the Third Information Revolution

    Alan MacfarlaneARTICLEVisual Anthropology2020References: 2

    This journal, Visual Anthropology, has now been in existence for a third of a century, and so it is an appropriate moment to look back at where we and our scholarship have come from, and what changes we have seen during our own lifetimes. This article first gives a rapid overview of the four major forms of information technology in human history. These were the age of oral transfer of messages, writing, printing, and lastly the age of mechanical …

  • Clash of Civilizations, The, Anthropology and

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2018

    Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of World Order (1996) is one of the most influential works on international relations since the 1990s. Although it has been criticized by many scholars, the implications of the work for anthropology have received comparatively little attention. This entry briefly outlines Huntington's argument about the inevitable nature of the international clashes and the difficulties of dealin…

  • Interviews with Eminent Anthropologists: An Online Resource

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2018

    Since the 1980s, Alan Macfarlane and his colleagues have conducted a set of interviews with eminent anthropologists from around the world. These are in‐depth filmed interviews, from twenty minutes to four hours in length. There are detailed summaries of all of them with the films, which makes it easier to search for specific topics or people. There are approximately 100 such interviews, which form the core of a wider set of over 200 covering all …

  • Worldviews

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2018

    The highest level of thought system is the “worldview,” which encompasses paradigms and schools of thought within it. There are a number of frameworks for understanding worldviews and their components, yet little attention has been paid to how they change. This entry analyzes the shift from premodern through modern to postmodern. In the last of these, there is a set of contesting worldviews

  • Functionalism

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2018

    The basic feature of functionalism lies in its assumption that the meaning of phenomena can be explained by their use or function within a society. The central role of functionalism as a method for anthropologists is in showing connections and giving confidence. The disadvantage of functionalism if taken to an extreme is the overlooking of history. This entry considers why functionalism became the dominant paradigm in the first half of the twenti…

  • Fieldwork, Processing the Experience: The Work of the Mind

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2018

    Social anthropology is unique as a discipline because the anthropologist's own body, personality, and mind become the main research tools. The anthropologist becomes a musical instrument upon which culture and people play. This requires a double process. There is the distancing from one's own culture and absorption into another in the physical fieldwork. Then there is a “second fieldwork” done within the mind of the anthropologist. This may start…

  • The influence of digit size and proportions on dexterity during cold exposure

    Open AccessAlan Macfarlane, Stephanie Payne et al.ARTICLEAmerican Journal of Physical…2018Cited by: 2References: 55

    The current study suggests that digit width influences dexterity in cold conditions, reflecting patterns found at room temperature. Hand and digit morphology may be the product of two significant constraints on the hand: dexterity and thermoregulation. In cold conditions, hand morphology appears to be predominantly constrained by thermal stress, at the expense of dexterity. This may have important implications for interpreting the morphology of e…

  • The Day the World Took Off: Reflections on Working on a Television Series

    Alan MacfarlaneARTICLEVisual Anthropology2014References: 1

    A shortened version of this article appeared in 2001 in Cambridge Anthropology. At that time and to that audience, some of the detail was not relevant. Nor was it possible to link the article to an Internet version of the actual films. We can now open up what is, in effect, a diary of a filming project to a different audience. This is the ethnographic account of the various stages of the making of the Channel 4 millenium television series, The Da…

  • Early Ethnographic Film in Britain: A Reflection on the Work of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

    Alan MacfarlaneARTICLEVisual Anthropology2010Cited by: 1

    A brief history points up the relative scarcity of ethnographic film made by British anthropologists in the 20th century. The reasons for this were the difficulty and expense of filmmaking until recent years, and a theoretical disinterest in filmmaking, leading to a limited opportunity to capture visually the last tribal worlds. The importance of Fürer-Haimendorf's collection of films thus stands out. The conditions which made his work in India, …

  • Japan Through the Looking Glass

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneBOOKJapan Through the Looking Glass2007

    This entertaining and endlessly surprising book takes us on an exploration into every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate. A series of meticulous investigations gradually uncovers the multi-faceted nature of a country and people who are even more extraordinary than they seem. Our journey encompasses religion, ritual, martial arts, manners, eating, drinking, hot baths, geishas, family, home, singing, wrestling, dan…

  • Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought

    Open AccessAlan Macfarlane, M Mann et al.BOOKErnest Gellner and Contemporary…2007

    Ernest Gellner was a unique scholar whose work covered areas as diverse as social anthropology, analytical philosophy, the sociology of the Islamic world, nationalism, psychoanalysis, East European transformations and kinship structures. Despite this diversity, there is an exceptional degree of unity and coherence in Gellner's work with his distinctly modernist, rationalist and liberal world-view evident in everything he wrote. His central proble…

  • Web Anthropology: Some Potentials for Visual and Computer Anthropology

    Alan MacfarlaneARTICLEVisual Anthropology2007

    About five years ago I designed and set up a website to test the possibilities of using the Internet for teaching and research. This site (www.alanmacfarlane.com) now has quite a wide range of mate

  • Anthropological and Other Ancestors: Notes on Setting up a Visual Archive of the Discipline

    Open AccessAlan Macfarlane, Saran Harrison et al.ARTICLEAnthropology News2005Cited by: 1

  • The Savage Wars of Peace

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneBOOKSavage Wars of Peace2003

    This book aims to solve the problem of how parts of mankind escaped from an apparently inevitable trap of war, famine and disease in the last three hundred years. Through a detailed comparative analys

  • The Destruction of War

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneCHAPTERSavage Wars of Peace2003

    It was not by accident that Malthus put ‘War’ as the first of the great ‘positive’ checks in pre-industrial societies. For it is not merely the killing of thousands in battles, but also the much greater effects of dislocation, often leading to a huge number of deaths by famine and disease, which explain why war and conquest have tended to be the major form of ‘crisis’ in most agrarian civilizations. The destruction of a single campaign could undo…

  • The Making of the Modern World

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneBOOKMaking of the Modern World2002

    At the start of the third Christian millennium we are aware of massive political, economic and ideological changes which condition the chances of liberty, wealth and equality. Yet it is surprisingly d

  • Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England

    Alan Macfarlane, James SharpeBOOKWitchcraft in Tudor and Stuart…2002

    This is a classic regional and comparative study of early modern witchcraft. The history of witchcraft continues to attract attention with its emotive and contentious debates. The methodology and conclusions of this book have impacted not only on witchcraft studies but the entire approach to social and cultural history with its quantitative and anthropological approach. The book provides an important case study on Essex as well as drawing compari…

  • The Making of the Modern World

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneCHAPTERMaking of the Modern World2002

    We can now return to some of the more general issues raised by this study of two theories concerning the making of the modern world. These are general reflections, stimulated by the thoughts of Maitland and Fukuzawa, but also drawing on other work I have undertaken over the last ten years. In particular, the chapter also draws on ideas generated by the two other books which I have written exploring these broad themes of the origins and nature of …

  • David Hume and the political economy of agrarian civilization

    Alan MacfarlaneARTICLEHistory of European Ideas2001Cited by: 1

    Montesquieu and Adam Smith undertook deep analyses of the structural laws of agrarian civilizations and described the traps and tendencies which would prevent any final escape from constant toil and inequality. David Hume's work in certain of his ‘Essays’ complements their work. He shows the social, political, religious and economic conditions which had made England the most free and wealthy nation in the world by his time. Simultaneously he show…

  • The Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality

    Open AccessAlan MacfarlaneBOOKRiddle of the Modern World2000

    What conditions the chances of liberty, wealth and equality at the start of the third Christian millennium? Why did human civilizations develop so slowly for thousands of years, and then transform the