O fantasma de Evans-Pritchard: diálogos da antropologia com a sua história

 

Frederico Delgado Rosa *

* Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal; fdelgadorosa@fcsh.unl.pt.

 

RESUMO

Tomando como estudo de caso a monografia de Sharon Hutchinson sobre os nuer, o presente artigo explora os quiproquós do diálogo entre a antropologia contemporânea e os clássicos, procurando detetar certas genealogias invisíveis que remontam aos funcionalistas britânicos, e nomeadamente a Evans-Pritchard. Procede a um esbatimento de certas oposições explícitas entre o presente e o passado da antropologia, revelando que as noções clássicas perpassam de forma subterrânea o discurso daqueles que dizem rejeitá-las e que muitas das preocupações atuais já tinham expressão nas etnografias modernas. É demonstrado que as abordagens estáticas – como a de Evans-Pritchard – tinham uma componente histórica e que a antropologia social britânica teve as suas respostas teóricas e metodológicas para as transformações dos contextos africanos sob domínio colonial.

Palavras-chave: história da antropologia, nuer, Evans-Pritchard, funcionalismo, Sharon Hutchinson, colonialismo.

 

The ghost of Evans-Pritchard: anthropology’s dialogues with its own history

ABSTRACT

Through the reading of Sharon Hutchinson’s monograph on the Nuer, this article explores the misunderstandings between contemporary anthropology and the modern classics. It tries to identify invisible genealogies that go back to the British functionalists, particularly to Evans-Pritchard, and minimizes the explicit oppositions between the present and the past of anthropology. It reveals that some classical notions are detectable in non-explicit ways among those who claim to reject them and, at the same time, that contemporary concerns have their roots in modern ethnographies. The author shows that static approaches – as the one by Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer – had a historical meaning and recalls that British social anthropology had its own theoretical and methodological answers to the transformations of African contexts under colonial rule.

Keywords: History of anthropology, Nuer, Evans-Pritchard, functionalism, Sharon Hutchinson, colonialism.

 

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