Historical Anthropology - 9780195699357

The relationship between anthropology and history has been contradictory as also passionate and productive. The two have often displayed mistrust of the other discipline and at other times have underscored their key convergences. Over the last three decades, the interchange between the two disciplines have acquired a fresh purpose in theoretical and empirical studies. This has resulted in considerations for the history of anthropology and anthropology of history. This collection brings together the terrains and trajectories of the entangling of anthropology and history. It offers to students and scholars a wide-ranging domain of anthropological and historical endeavour under the rubric of historical anthropology--marking its departures, charting its contexts, exploring its characteristics and tracking its predicaments and possibilities.Conversations between anthropology and history have been approached by treating the two as disciplines. It explores formative orientations of anthropology to time and temporality, and of history to culture and tradition. It considers the more recent transformations of anthropology and history. It discusses important developments in study of pasts and communities, empire and nation, and culture and power in South Asia as part of a wider interplay between anthropology and history. In a nutshell, this volume attempts to open up the terms of historical anthropology.