Pars Pro TotoObservation

Historical Anthropology in the Textual Field of Rasulid Yemen

Bibliographic Data

ID2156355
AuthorsDaniel Varisco (0000-0002-1307-7977, Symrise (Germany), corresponding author), Daniel Martin Varisco
Year2015
Volume26
Issue1
Pages92-109
Publication date2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0275-7206 • E-ISSN: 1477-2612
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02757206.2014.933105
OpenAlexW2094758826
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited24

This essay addresses the suggestion made over a century ago by F. W. Maitland that anthropology must choose between being history and being nothing. At the time Maitland was correct in criticizing the simplistic unilinear evolutionary schemes of Edward Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan. My own career combines ethnography among Yemeni farmers in the late 1970s with ongoing analysis of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Yemeni agricultural texts, demonstrating the value of drawing on both kinds of research to better understand the history of agriculture in Yemen. Details from the textual corpus are provided to supplement observations made in the field. My approach to agricultural and tax record texts from Yemen's Rasulid period is described as an example of what anthropology and history can contribute to each other. I argue that the choice is not between specific disciplines but rather the application of sound methods that seek to approximate reality rather than dogmatically recreate it. Anthropology and history have much to gain, as Evans-Pritchard once noted, in learning from each other. Anthropology is approached as a research field that has no preconceived borders, but one that necessitates learning from past methodological and theoretical trends, whether from within the formal discipline or from without

Aesthetics · Applied anthropology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Field (mathematics · Historical anthropology · Nothing · Period (music · Sociology · Value (mathematics · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy