BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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22 Bob Scribnerweather or simply future events 21 . Now in none of this is there any referenceto cats as symbols of sexuality and Darnton's arbitrary applicationof this particular symbol has a decidedly freudian ring to it 22 .The example raises some very acute questions about both methods andsources for the historian who wishes to engage in historical anthropology.The first issue of method is how far one can take over anthropologicaltheories uncritically, without reflection on the appropriate modificationsrequired for the historian's period or subject. Anthropologists are wellaware that the same method and conceptualisation that might apply toAfrican tribal societies cannot be simply transferred to Latin-Americanpeasant societies. But the problem has become more complicated thanthat through the growing awareness in the discipline during the 1980s ofhow anthropology constructs its subject from a very particular point ofview, namely from of white, male, middle-class Western observers. Thisperception is certainly not new and was raised as a decisive objection inan important debate of the early 1960s over attempts to distinguish analyticallybetween religion and magic 23 . Anthropologists are now rethinkingnot only their methods, but even the very basis of their discipline, andthis certainly means that the historian cannot simply turn to anthropologyfor methodological or even conceptual guidance without a good deal ofreflection on the status and the validity of the method to which he orshe feels attracted.There is a further more specific problem of method.It is usually saidthat the difference between the anthropologist and the historian is that theformer can interrogate his or her subjects in fieldwork and so arrive at21 H. Bachthold-Staubli, Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, vol. 4 (Berlin,1932), 1107- 1124.22 It is interesting and perhaps informative about Darnton's mode of argument by association that the first edition of the volume (as does the German edition) contained apiece of extremely misleading 'visual evidence', a reproduction of a sketch for Manet's provocative Olympia, in which a cat stretches itself along the buttocks of the reclining nude. The date of this work from the 1850s is some two generations after thestory in question, as is the reproduction of Antoine Wiertz's 1850 depiction of 'ayoung witch 1 . Darnton seems to share with Geertz a preference for the imagery ofthe sexually-liberated 1960s, which it has been argued influenced Geertz's choice oflanguage and metaphor in his analysis of the Balinese cockfight, see Vincent Crapanzo,Hermes' Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire. On the Epistemology of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 60 - 69.23 Murray and Rosalie Wax, 'The Notion of Magic', Current Anthropology 4 (1963),495-518.
Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe 23some more elaborated understanding of their thought-world than if dealingwith written records. Yet even this has become a spiky problem forthe anthropologist, since the anthropologist can not only read into aculture what he or she desires to find (this dilemma is no different forthe historian), but informants can also be only too willing to respond tothe anthropologist's eager questions and provide the answers they believethe inquirer seeks. This awareness has led to a revaluation of the work ofMargaret Mead, who went seeking a society embodying the forms ofsexual liberation she idealised as a woman of the 1930s, and found informantsonly too willing (whether out of politeness, bafflement with thequestions, or a sense of fun) to supply the answers Mead sought 24 . Theapplication of gender analysis has also made us aware of a further problemhere, that the male anthropologist was often blind, perhaps necessarilyso, to female participation, for example, in village rituals: eitherbecause he did think or was not allowed to question women about theirritual roles, or because the village males wished to present themselves asin control of the ritual, or simply because decorum prohibited him fromquestioning women in the same way as the males. Indeed, a male fieldworkermay have had no opportunity to view female ritual roles or evenglimmering of their existence 25 . The relevance for the historian of earlymodern Europe does not require to be spelled out, but every historianwho is aware of the silence of her or his sources about female rolesknows the problem.This brings us to the question of sources. The major task for the historianof early modern Europe is undoubtedly where to find 'ethnographic'sources of the same detail and quality as those apparently available to theanthropologist. The bulk of available sources invariably originate fromthe hands of officials or else those of an educated elite possibly quite unrepresentativeof a society comprised largely of illiterate ruraldwellers.We cannot get around this problem by simply assuming that elites share24 For the discussion over Margaret Mead, see Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead andSamoa: the Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Cambridge, Mass.,1983); Lowell D. Holmes, Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead/Freeman Controversy and Beyond (South Hadley, Mass., 1987).25 On these issues see Rayna R. Reiter, ed., Towards an Anthropology of Women (NewYork, 1975), 13 - 16; James Clifford, 'Introduction 1 , in: Writing Culture. The Poeticsand Politics of Ethnography, ed. J. Clifford, G. E. Marcus (Berkeley, 1986), 17 - 18;and more generally Henrietta Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Oxford, 1988).
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BOB SCRIBNER Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Europe

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