Anthropology and History - Alan Macfarlane

Interview 2:4 of the interviews by Richard Marshall in February - March 2021 on Zoom. For more on Alan Macfarlane please see . The interviews are related to the set of autobiographical books on ’Magic and Modernity’ which will be published in 2021. For more on Richard Marshall and his other interviews, please see SUMMARY The methodology of traditional anthropology – a way of gathering data – history based on documents and remains from the past – use your brain and eyes to make sense of it – the use of archives – anthropologists (used to) go to a remote society – world turned upside down – totally different – stretches understanding – David Hume’s problem of understanding the unknown – how one enters another world as a child learns through participant-observation – work out associations through guesses and then test – begin to piece fragments together – anthropologist becomes a musical instrument on which the culture plays – Geertz