Friedrich Schiller’s Broad Embrace: fieldwork
and intellectual history
In today’s
world, where ideas travel through the internet via iPhones at great speed, I
prefer to see anthropology as a type of Intellectual
History. In doing so, I want to avoid the trap of seeing some cultures as
primitive and their ideas as merely popular. Instead, I want to move closer to
H. Stuart Hughes’ definition of an intellectual history as “the study of major
ideas in their pristine form on the higher level” (1958:11), but with one
variation: namely, in terms of an exchange of ideas between say a field-working
anthropologist and people being researched. The whole thing becomes a series of
formal or casual conversations as when intending to understand their thought system, the researcher is
confronted instead with, for example, their questions and ideas about the
Judeo-Christian tradition, or evolution, or neoliberal economics encouraged by
a Brazilian or Mozambican type of Universal or Unitarian Pentecostalism. As
well, in most regions of Africa there were or are elite groups (whether ethnic, tribal, or political) who shared
major innovators, institutions, and an intellectual heritage within a
geographical region, making it possible to see their ideas as pristine styles
of thought and guiding patterns that characterize specific periods of time.
These elite groups may also be in struggles with new governments, or vice
versa, and thus convey a sense that they are living in precarious times.
My book,
with the sub-title, “An Intellectual Journey” is an attempt to describe such a
series of “conversations” between anthropologist and people, moving
anthropology within the sphere of intellectual
history. And as early twentieth century German, French, and Italian
intellectual innovators found, so this author too realized that even the history of ideas is not solely based on
reason but includes emotional involvements that might even be, in this case
became, the central element in the story (see Hughes 1958:15). In the field, a
period of reorientation and many
surprises, I too discovered the importance of a deep connection between science
and literature or art, as well as the important role played by subjective
values in our interactions (ibid). To this day, social science resists this
connection because of the fear of losing scientific status. But to me, status
is less important than mutual growth, understanding, and Friedrich Schiller’s
broad embrace.
Karla Poewe
November
22, 2018
