Alan Macfarlane | |
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Born | |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Worcester College, University of Oxford (BA, MA, DPhil) London School of Economics and Political Science (MPhil) School of Oriental and African Studies (PhD) |
Known for | The Origins of English Individualism |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Anthropology History |
Institutions | King's College, University of Cambridge |
Thesis | Witchcraft prosecutions in Essex, 1560–1680 (1967) |
Doctoral advisor | Keith Thomas |
Website | alanmacfarlane |
Part of a series on |
Anthropology |
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Alan Donald James Macfarlane FBA FRHistS (born 20 December 1941 in Shillong, Meghalaya, India) is an anthropologist and historian, and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China. [1] He has focused on comparative study of the origins and nature of the modern world. In recent years he has become increasingly interested in the use of visual material in teaching and research. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society.
Macfarlane was born into a British family of tea planters in Assam in northeast India. He was born in Ganesh Das Hospital in the hill station of Shillong, at the time the capital of undivided Assam state and now the capital of Meghalaya. His father "Mac" Macfarlane was also a reserve officer of the Assam Rifles, besides being a tea planter, and his mother was the author Iris Macfarlane. The family lived in various tea estates in both Upper Assam and Lower Assam, in the Brahmaputra valley.
Macfarlane was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and Sedbergh School. He then read modern history at Worcester College, University of Oxford, from 1960 to 1963, completing a Bachelor of Arts degree, and went on to his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy on Witchcraft prosecutions in Essex, 1560–1680: A Sociological Analysis degrees, in 1967. He also completed a Master of Philosophy degree in anthropology on "The regulation of marital and sexual relationships in 17th century England" at the London School of Economics in 1968 and a second doctorate in anthropology on "Population and resources in central Nepal" in 1972 at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. [2]
He went on to be a research fellow in history at King's College, University of Cambridge. In 1975, he was appointed lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, becoming a reader in historical anthropology in 1981 and then a full professor of anthropological science and personal chair in 1991. He became emeritus professor of anthropological science at the University of Cambridge and a life fellow of King's College, Cambridge in 2009. Macfarlane received the Huxley Memorial Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2012.
Macfarlane's first major publication, in 1970, was Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, a historical study of the conditions that gave rise to English witchcraft beliefs. His approach drew on the work of classic functionalist anthropologists Edward Evans-Pritchard and Lucy Mair. Also in 1970, Macfarlane published The Family Life of Ralph Josselin , a study of the diary of a famous seventeenth-century clergyman. His approach here, exploring the emotions, fears and relationships of an individual to attempt a historical study of private life in seventeenth century England, was reminiscent of the Annales School. [3]
Macfarlane has undertaken several periods of ethnographic field research, the first of these a period in Nepal with the Gurung people. He used this period as the foundation of a 1976 study, Resources and Population a Malthusian analysis of Gurung responses to scarce resources and an expanding population. Following Malthus' demographic principles, Macfarlane warned that the Gurung might experience a 'population check' in coming decades.
Macfarlane has published extensively on English history, advancing the idea that many traits of so-called "modern society" appeared in England long before the period of modernity as defined by historians, such as Lawrence Stone. Drawing loosely on work by Max Weber, Macfarlane has contrasted the defining characteristics of modern and traditional society. His 1987 book The Culture of Capitalism is a non-deterministic study of the emergence of modernity and capitalism in Western Europe. Two further books, The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Marriage and Love in England (1986), explore the way English family institutions and social life emerged distinctly from continental European institutions and experiences. [4]
During the 1990s, Macfarlane was invited to lecture in Japan, initiating a period of research into the distinctive emergence of modernity in Japan by contrast to England and Europe. 1997's The Savage Wars of Peace returned to Macfarlane's early interest in Malthus and demographics, comparing the modernity experiences of England and Japan. The book argues that England and Japan, both relatively large but non-remote islands, were each positioned to develop an autonomous culture while still profiting from nearby continental influence. Through different means, both Japan and England overcame the Malthusian trap, keeping birth and mortality rates under control, thus providing a demographic impetus for the rise of capitalism and prosperity. [5] Macfarlane wrote an entire book dedicated to Japan published in 2007, Japan Through the Looking Glass. [6]
Macfarlane's work on modernity acknowledges his Enlightenment roots. His Riddle of the Modern World (2000) and Making of the Modern World (2001) are contributions to the field of history of ideas, addressing the work of Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ernest Gellner, Yukichi Fukuzawa and Frederic Maitland. [7]
Another strand in his work addresses the role of particular inventions in transforming history. The Glass Bathyscaphe: How Glass Changed the World (2002), co-authored with Gerry Martin, discusses how the invention and use of glass facilitated European dominion overseas. Macfarlane and his mother Iris co-wrote Green Gold: The Empire of Tea (2003), presenting the thesis that tea contributed to English prosperity, preventing epidemics by requiring the boiling of water and by promoting antibiotic effects.
2005's Letters to Lily distils Macfarlane's reflections on a life of research, as addressed to his granddaughter Lily Bee. As a non-academic work it brought Macfarlane to the attention of a wider, non-scholarly audience.
Macfarlane's work has been widely read and cited by his contemporaries. [8] Critics have challenged the role he ascribes to English institutions in the establishment of modernity, and his moral relativism as a champion of modernity who nonetheless affirms the validity of non-Western institutions. [9]
Together with Mark Turin, Macfarlane established the Digital Himalaya Project in December 2000 and now serves as chairman of the executive board of the World Oral Literature Project. He is also a co-editor of The Fortnightly Review's "new series" online.
As editor The Gurungs: A Himalayan Population of Nepal by Bernard Pignede with Sarah Harrison, Ratna Pustak Bhandar, Kathmandu, 1993, 523 p. ASIN B00B79CVSC
As contributor The Nagas: Hill Peoples of Northeast India - Society, Culture and the Colonial Encounter by Julian Jacobs with Sarah Harrison and Anita Herle, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, 356 p. ISBN 0500973881
Following and expanding The Making of the Modern World: Visions from the West and East
Inspired by and continuing Letters To Lily: On How the World Works also addressed to younger persons of the author's and author's friends' families.
As editor The Education of Iris Macfarlane 1922-1939 by Iris Macfarlane, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Silicon Valley, July 2018, 234 p. ISBN 978-1722269296 (the text is available on this page)
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of Camellia sinensis, an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northern Myanmar. Tea is also made, but rarely, from the leaves of Camellia taliensis. After plain water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. There are many different types of tea; some have a cooling, slightly bitter, and astringent flavour, while others have profiles that include sweet, nutty, floral, or grassy notes. Tea has a stimulating effect in humans, primarily due to its caffeine content.
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissance—in the Age of Reason of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century Enlightenment. Commentators variously consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or as late as the period falling between the 1980s and 1990s; the following era is often referred to as "postmodernity". The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era.
Charles Margrave Taylor is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec, and professor emeritus at McGill University best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, the history of philosophy, and intellectual history. His work has earned him the Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize.
Secularity, also the secular or secularness, is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. In the Middle Ages, there were even secular clergy. Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. The word secular has a meaning very similar to profane as used in a religious context.
The New Culture Movement was a progressive sociopolitical movement in China during the 1910s and 1920s. Participants criticized many aspects of traditional Chinese society, in favor of new formulations of Chinese culture informed by modern ideals of mass political participation. Arising out of disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Republic of China to address China's problems, it featured scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Hengzhe, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, He Dong, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Bing Xin, and Hu Shih, many classically educated, who led a revolt against Confucianism. The movement was launched by the writers of New Youth magazine, where these intellectuals promoted a new society based on unconstrained individuals rather than the traditional Confucian system. In 1917, Mr. Hu Shih put forward the famous “Eight Principle”, that is, abandon the ancient traditional writing method and use vernacular.
Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner is a British intellectual historian. He is regarded as one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought. He has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Wolfson History Prize in 1979 and the Balzan Prize in 2006. Between 1996 and 2008 he was Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the Emeritus Professor of the Humanities and Co-director of The Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London.
The Gorkha Kingdom, also known as the Gorkha Confederation or the Gorkha Empire, was a member of the Chaubisi rajya, a confederation of 24 states, located at the intersection of Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent. In 1743, the kingdom began a campaign of military expansion, annexing several neighbors and becoming present-day Nepal.
Gurung or Tamu are a Tibetan ethnic group living in the hills and mountains of Gandaki Province of Nepal. Gurungs speak Tamu kyi which is a Sino-Tibetan language derived from the Tibeto-Burman language family. The written form of Gurung is heavily dependent on the Tibetan script and history and details related to their culture and tradition is passed on from one generation to the other usually by word-of-mouth.
The Sinosphere, also known as the Chinese cultural sphere, East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The Sinosphere comprises Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Other definitions may include the regions of modern-day Mongolia and Singapore, due either to historical Chinese influence or a contemporary overseas Chinese population. The Sinosphere is different from the Sinophone world, which indicates regions where the Chinese language is spoken.
The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500. From the 1990s, it is more common among historians to refer to the period after the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century as the early modern period. The modern period is today more often used for events from the 19th century until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history. The common definition of the modern period today is often associated with events like the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the transition to nationalism towards the liberal international order.
A teahouse or tearoom is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other light refreshments. A tea room may be a room set aside in a hotel, especially for serving afternoon tea, or may be an establishment that only serves cream teas. Although the function of a tearoom may vary according to the circumstance or country, teahouses often serve as centers of social interaction, like coffeehouses.
The Digital Himalaya project was established in December 2000 by Mark Turin, Alan Macfarlane, Sara Shneiderman, and Sarah Harrison. The project's principal goal is to collect and preserve historical multimedia materials relating to the Himalaya, such as photographs, recordings, and journals, and make those resources available over the internet and offline, on external storage media. The project team have digitized older ethnographic collections and data sets that were deteriorating in their analogue formats, so as to protect them from deterioration and make them available and accessible to originating communities in the Himalayan region and a global community of scholars.
Sir Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd, usually cited as G. E. R. Lloyd, is a historian of ancient science and medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is the senior scholar in residence at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England.
Azar Gat is an Israeli researcher of war, nationalism and ideology, and a professor at the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University. His research combines expertise in the fields of history, evolution, anthropology, and social sciences. He is the author of ten books that deal with the history of military thought, the fundamental questions of war and its causes, the struggles between democratic and non-democratic states, nationalism, and the phenomenon of ideological fixation. His books have been translated into many languages.
Maurice Émile Félix Bloch is a British anthropologist. He is famous for his fieldwork on the shift of agriculturalists in Madagascar, Japan and other parts of the world, and has also contributed important neo-Marxian work on power, history, kinship, and ritual.
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Hinduism is regarded by modern Theosophy as one of the main sources of "esoteric wisdom" of the East. The Theosophical Society was created in a hope that Asian philosophical-religious ideas "could be integrated into a grand religious synthesis." Prof. Antoine Faivre wrote that "by its content and its inspiration" the Theosophical Society is greatly dependent on Eastern traditions, "especially Hindu; in this, it well reflects the cultural climate in which it was born." A Russian Indologist Alexander Senkevich noted that the concept of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy was based on Hinduism. According to Encyclopedia of Hinduism, "Theosophy is basically a Western esoteric teaching, but it resonated with Hinduism at a variety of points."