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history at one point in time: “working together” in Maale, 1975
Author(s) -
DONHAM DONALD L.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1985.12.2.02a00050
Subject(s) - sociology , mythology , politics , anthropology , social stratification , set (abstract data type) , epistemology , aesthetics , gender studies , social science , history , law , political science , philosophy , computer science , classics , programming language
That history is about how things came to be, and that anthropology is about the structure of things once they have come to be, is a notion deeply embedded in anthropology. The difficulty with such an idea is that it promotes a myth of a “restful” present, a present created somehow by the organization of societies and cultures rather than the practices of men and women. This essay, in contrast, attempts to analyze communal labor in a Maale community during 1975 to show how people actively created a particular set of social and cultural forms, a particular way of “working together.” [work, domestic groups, political factions, stratification, history]