Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology - Time & Temporality

Outer space

Rebecca Tishler — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:54:32 +0000

Rocket launch at Playalinda Beach, Florida, 2017. Picture by Jill Bazeley

Jagiellonian University

Initially published 26 Nov 2025

Abstract:

People’s daily lives have always relied heavily on their link with outer space. From using the constellations for navigation millennia ago to connecting with thousands of satellites that provide geopositioning, communication, and weather monitoring services, outer space has been a constant companion. But it doesn’t always appear as such in today’s world. Today, space exploration might seem distant and reserved for a select few—astronauts, billionaire tourists, astronomers, or the military. However, ethnographic work shows how deeply outer space is intertwined with people’s lives on Earth, from the daily work of space scientists to the impacts of space infrastructure on local communities around the world.

Since outer space cannot often be known directly, what humans know about it and how they relate to it tends to be shaped by what they know about and how they relate to Earth. Consequently, earthly relations and political dynamics inevitably influence human activities in space. At the same time, an anthropological perspective on outer space can help defamiliarise the taken-for-granted contexts and factors specific to the earthly realm, revealing how deeply they shape human lives and people’s understanding of Earth within the cosmos. Thus, examining outer space can help us recontextualise fundamental questions about society and culture, compelling us to expand our analytical framework to encompass the cosmic realm but also encouraging us to explore alternative models for social life on Earth and beyond. This entry showcases anthropological research that has attempted to answer three fundamental questions at the human-cosmos interface: How do people interact with outer space? How does outer space impact human lives? How does outer space influence our understanding of social reality?

Introduction

Outer space exerts a constant, albeit sometimes imperceptible or remote, influence on the daily lives of people worldwide. From treating the sky as the domain of ancestors and a guide for social and environmental understanding, to utilising space-based infrastructures and technologies for essential needs like communication and travel, outer space profoundly impacts human existence. Yet, what constitutes ‘outer space’? How have people interacted with this realm? And given its intimate connection to human life, is the term ‘outer’ space even appropriate?

The boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space remains ambiguous, conventionally placed between 80 and 100 kilometres above sea level. Anthropological studies generally avoid rigid definitions of outer space as a purely physical entity, recognising it instead as a domain of human sociality beyond Earth’s atmosphere where diverse political, social, economic, and cultural relations are being played out.

At the same time, media and political discourses often frame outer space within an expansionist, competitive, and developmental narrative, employing terms like ‘space colonisation’, ‘frontier’, ‘race’, and ‘settlement’. Some of these are also used in academic literature. International and national legislation governing space activities, such as the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, frequently reinforce the perception of space as an empty territory, available on a first-come, first-served basis. Some argue that the very descriptors ‘outer’ and ‘extraterrestrial’ perpetuate this sense of detachment, overlooking the long-standing Indigenous connections to the sky and the myriad ways in which it has shaped the lives of various communities and individuals throughout history, both before and after rockets soared through the atmosphere (see, for example, Bawaka Country et al. 2020). Certain critical scholars refer to outer space with the term ‘cosmos’, which usually carries a more philosophical or spiritual connotation than ‘outer space’. Within this entry, these terms are treated as synonymous. Doing so deliberately avoids reinforcing some of the dualisms—such as technology/culture or sacred/profane—that anthropological inquiry strives to critically examine and challenge.

Space anthropology is still an emerging field, despite its roots in early works by Ben Finney and Eric Jones (1986), among others. While it is already grappling with intricate terminological challenges and shifting research foci, its inquiries are fundamentally driven by a desire to ask better questions about humans and understand their place within the cosmos. Thus, ethnographic studies have investigated communities deeply immersed in outer space, such as space scientists discovering new planets by comparing their features to Earth and engineers working with Martian rovers that navigate an extraterrestrial terrain, for whom the cosmos is not merely an imagined realm but also a remote yet tangible and real place. These studies demonstrate that our understanding of the cosmos is not solely derived from an unmediated scientific perception, but rather shaped by a confluence of individual imaginations, organisational structures, and national cultural influences (Messeri 2016; Vertesi 2015).

As people’s familiarity with the vast cosmos deepens, it forces them to re-evaluate Earth’s position within it, broadening understandings of human environments and challenging anthropocentric and geocentric perspectives. At the same time, anthropological and historical research consistently underscores the persistent terrestrial impacts of space exploration, the ecological and social footprint of which extends beyond the celestial sphere. Launch sites, research facilities, and other infrastructure are firmly rooted on Earth. These structures are not merely stepping stones to the cosmos; anthropological research argues that they are also intricately intertwined with earthly realities of colonialism, environmental impacts, and social displacement (e.g. Redfield 2000, 212–44). Outer space thus emerges as an arena of political power struggles, military competition, and capitalist expansion, where approaches deemed historically problematic on Earth are apparently readily adopted for exploring the unknown. Despite the powerful forces that frame the cosmos as a domain for profit-making and geopolitical expansion, anthropological perspectives both provide nuance for and problematise these narratives.

As space exploration continues, anthropological analysis has also addressed the more speculative possibilities of encountering extraterrestrial cultures or establishing human habitats beyond Earth. Ethnographic knowledge of intercultural dialogue, encounters, and migrations once served as anthropologists’ claim to a rightful role in space exploration endeavours (Finney and Jones 1986). Today, some continue to envisage outer space as a potential new home for humanity where the limitations and shortcomings of current societies could be transcended (Valentine 2012). This opens up discussions about human futures, both on Earth and potentially beyond. Consequently, outer space emerges as a space for not only critiquing existing politico-economic relations but also for projecting and contemplating alternative social formations.

From an anthropological perspective, outer space can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of terrestrial realities. According to this approach, earthly relationships and dynamics play out and expand within a cosmic context, intricately connected to events on Earth. On the other hand, outer space can also be seen as an overarching realm that encompasses our planet. This perspective recontextualises Earth’s position and significance within the cosmos. It offers potential avenues for imagining alternative social and economic relations both on Earth and beyond. This entry delves into anthropological investigations exploring the profound relationship between humans and outer space. It examines three core questions that have shaped space anthropology so far. These are: How do humans engage with the cosmos? What is the impact of outer space on our lives? And what is its influence on people’s understanding of social reality?

How do people interact with outer space?

Ethnographic research has demonstrated a diverse range of ways in which people around the world engage with the cosmos. Their interactions shape their understanding of its significance within their communities and for humanity as a whole. While these understandings may sometimes differ, their analytical value lies in their capacity to offer alternative perspectives that can enrich, nuance, problematise, or challenge established narratives of space and space exploration. For example, Indigenous connections with the sky often problematise the assumption that outer space is empty and inanimate and no people or beings other than a limited number of astronauts have travelled or lived in space. Reportedly, Inuit peoples in Alaska laughed when an anthropologist informed them about the first Moon landing, as they claimed to have been travelling there for years (Young 1987).

In fact, several Indigenous knowledges express a profound interconnectedness between the earthly and cosmic realms, recognising their mutual dependence. The sky is often considered to be inhabited by ancestors and other beings. Indigenous cosmologies such as those of the Yolŋu in northern Australia are deeply embedded within the stories told about outer space and the sky (Bawaka Country et al. 2020). Moreover, oral traditions and Indigenous knowledge of the skies not only aid in understanding natural patterns related to weather, seasons, animal behaviour, and plant life but also sometimes pre-date Western scientific knowledge of historical celestial phenomena (Hamacher 2023). Given their close and kin relationships with the cosmos, Indigenous communities worldwide such as the Diné (the Navajo nation in the southwestern United States) often caution against exploitative approaches to space exploration, which they believe disrupt the cosmic order (Bartels 2024).

Non-Indigenous interactions with the cosmos can appear to lack the Indigenous sense of kinship with the sky. Space scientists and engineers within major Western space agencies and laboratories, recently the focus of ethnographic attention, often rely on technological devices and terrestrial landscapes to mediate their interactions with and conceptions of the cosmos. However, even they strive to reaffirm the reality of the cosmic objects they study and operate upon, seeking to establish more intimate and multi-layered relationships with outer space.

For instance, scientists who study planets that circle stars outside our solar system (exoplanets) strive to measure the dimming of a star while the exoplanet transits across its face—a technique known as ‘the transit method’. Subsequently, they visualise and interpret data obtained through such methods to turn the measurements into something that would seem more tangible and relatable. As part of this process, the scientists imagine exoplanets as potential places that they might inhabit, as worlds (Messeri 2016). They draw, for example, upon the more familiar language of the Earth’s solar system to describe the properties of newly discovered planets. Even though their precise parameters remain uncertain, astronomers employ familiar comparisons, calling the exoplanets ‘super-Earths’ or ‘hot Neptunes’, etc. They also utilise a variety of visualisation techniques, from producing curves and graphs to generating statistics, to represent these places that elude visual observation. Similarly, scientists can now translate cosmic phenomena, such as gravitational waves, into audible sounds. While this process relies on established scientific theories, models, and instrumental captures, the resulting sounds are also shaped by a multitude of social and cultural metaphors. For example, an astronomical observatory is compared to ‘a hearing aid’ and sounds of cosmic phenomena to ‘chirps’ or ‘whines’. These visual and acoustic ‘informalisms’ (Helmreich 2016) not only reflect upon the original theories and instrumental data but also foster a more intimate connection between the astronomer and the celestial objects they study.

This connection mirrors the direct experience of observing the night sky at an optical observatory. Although astronomical work increasingly relies on digital data, some astronomers still deeply value the opportunity to conduct research at an observatory, where the distant universe becomes more tangible (Hoeppe 2012). Ethnographic work within science and engineering teams responsible for operating Mars rovers has also underscored the importance of such embodied practices (Vertesi 2015). Various team members identified with the bodies of the rovers, incorporating their physical gestures and movements into their understanding of the rovers and their objects of analysis. This shows how important representational techniques are in establishing and cultivating relationships with the extraterrestrial. Simultaneously, team members aligned their work structures with local and workplace-based norms, meetings, and forms of talk, thereby forging a specific community. Put differently, the intimate engagements with the Mars rovers represented the extraterrestrial as well as contributing to the production and maintenance of a particular social order. People’s representations of and engagements with outer space not only facilitate the scientific exploration of the cosmos and render extraterrestrial scientific objects more legible, but also generate new social relations on Earth, aligning individuals’ aims and values in their collective endeavour to familiarise the unknown.

Many of the techniques that bring the cosmos closer and render it more familiar are inherently social and cultural. Consequently, our representations of outer space are profoundly shaped by cultural tropes and socio-political narratives. The spectacular images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, for example, are not merely unfiltered photographs of the universe; they are products of scientific and aesthetic negotiation. Astronomers had to make deliberate choices about how to translate raw data into meaningful colours and contrasts. In the process, they drew upon familiar geological and meteorological formations, as well as the iconography of nineteenth century American Western landscapes (Kessler 2012). These images were carefully composed for both American domestic and international audiences, serving as a form of scientific outreach and public service. However, by drawing parallels to earthly landscapes and aligning with narratives of outer space as a frontier, these images also encouraged a specific perception of the cosmos: a place simultaneously distant yet inviting exploration. Similar dynamics are evident in other public-facing initiatives, even those designed to be more ‘democratic’, i.e. open to independent public interpretation. For instance, a group of computer scientists at NASA aimed to create an interactive map of Mars that the public could explore independently. Yet, even this initiative promoted a specific way of seeing Mars: as a dynamic, vital place that merits continued research and financial commitment from NASA's exploration project—ultimately reflecting NASA’s overarching mission of extraterrestrial conquest (Messeri 2017). Our highly mediated engagements with outer space offer valuable insights into the socio-cultural nature of how humans represent the cosmos. They also demonstrate how we connect to the cosmic realm while simultaneously shaping our realities on Earth.

Analogue sites (and various forms of simulation training, more generally) offer another example of an important medium for human interaction with outer space, particularly for experimenting with aspects of human spaceflight missions. These sites allow space scientists and future astronauts to familiarise themselves with the unfamiliar environment of outer space while remaining on Earth. Analogue research typically involves travelling to locations with environmental, geological, or other conditions resembling those found on Mars or other celestial bodies, enabling the testing of equipment and mission designs. For example, ethnographic work with scientists at NASA demonstrates how Mars was brought into being as a group of scientists descended upon an analogue site in the Utah desert (Messeri 2016). These ‘mission’ members treated earthly geological formations as if they were Martian, weaving planet-specific narratives about their past and present. This experience provided the closest possible approximation of being on Mars, and it helped maintain the possibility of future human habitation on the planet. The physical and imaginary elements of the analogue mission, including the strict protocols governing ventures outside the ‘space habitat’, induced a cognitive shift among its participants, redefining the experience of living on Earth. However, these missions also possessed more practical elements. At the time of this research, NASA had stalled plans for human missions to Mars. Consequently, the activities observed by the anthropologist present also represented an attempt by NASA employees to cultivate a utopian narrative within the agency, one that preserved the possibility of Martian missions in the future (Messeri 2016).

In another ethnographic study of analogue sites, anthropologist Valentina Marcheselli worked with astrobiologists in Italian caves and mines, simulating potential microbial habitats or shelters on Mars (2022). Their embodied experiences of the caves and mines were crucial not only for transforming these earthly settings into otherworldly analogues but also for establishing astrobiology as a novel scientific discipline. The analogue astrobiological work challenged traditional scientific practices, as its observations and results were no longer solely derived from hypothesis testing but emerged through a more open-ended approach. Such embodied and open-ended research was deemed particularly suitable for a discipline dedicated to encountering and explaining the extraterrestrial unknown. Studying analogue sites, then, reveals something about the inherently dual nature of analogue space missions. In trying to keep Martian exploration viable in times of institutional contraction, or reinforcing the case for a new scientific research method, they aim to make mission participants more intimately familiar with another world, while also utilising this work to influence human engagement with this one.

In a similar vein, astronautics, or the science of space travel, is thought of by US scientists, physicians, and engineers involved in human spaceflight as relying on various ‘systems’ in order to work (Olson 2018). Such systems are defined as technologies that relate diverse concepts and materialities to one another. Thinking of human-technology constellations as systems serves a technocratic function. It contributes to perceiving outer space as governable, thereby perpetuating expansionist narratives of space exploration. The work conducted in extreme terrestrial environments, such as analogue lunar bases on the seafloor, and the allure of radically different extraterrestrial conditions, resonates with a culture in which the extreme has positive connotations as a catalyst for improvement and progress. Consequently, analogue missions participate in a cultural dynamic that frames the extreme as an imperative for overcoming challenges, fostering social innovation, and achieving distinctiveness (Olson 2018).

Earlier research on the European Space Agency (ESA) examined the entanglement of space with a different cultural dynamic, specifically the metaphor of European cooperation (Zabusky 1995). Studied during the 1990s, European cooperation in space science turned out to, paradoxically, rely on both conflict and diversity. The inherent internal diversity of European institutions, in which staff comes from different cultures and linguistic backgrounds, helps ESA employees avoid feelings of alienation and stagnation. Through regular, contested interactions and performances of difference, cooperation emerges through space technology as a form of rational solidarity. However, this process is not merely instrumental; it also constitutes a journey through which individuals experience a sacred and intense sense of community (i.e. communitas).

Even though science often claims to be largely impartial and independent of cultural influences, the social nature of the human-space interface is evident not only within the structures and practices of scientific communities, but also in the scientific outcomes of major research organisations such as NASA. Their varied internal hierarchies and interactional norms produce different kinds of scientific knowledge. Sometimes NASA's collective work modes relied on collectivist decision-making structures such as consensus, and emphasised the importance of arriving at a common ground. On other occasions, integrative work modes were favoured, stemming from a position that respected the autonomy of separate units and tried to unite the particular interests of different units in some form of a workable whole. These differing organisational structures were reflected, for example, in the authorship structure of scientific articles and in the influence that different scientific disciplines had in NASA's research (Vertesi 2020).

While the socio-cultural connections between Earth and outer space turn out to be robust, as is evident in human representations and engagements with the cosmos, it is also crucial to avoid an overly deterministic view of this relationship. While human perceptions and interactions with the universe are undoubtedly shaped by cultural narratives and social structures, these influences are multifaceted and nuanced rather than one-dimensional or all-powerful. For example, NASA employees working with Mars rovers encountered significant challenges in aligning their work schedules with the Martian day-night cycle, which is around 40 minutes longer than that of Earth. Despite the use of visual displays and other representational techniques to track Martian time, the inherent mismatch between Earth and Mars time led to confusion and—with ever-changing work schedules meant to allow staff to keep up with Mars—bodily fatigue (Mirmalek 2020). This highlights the limitations of simply imposing external (and extraterrestrial) frameworks on human experience.

Just as the human body cannot simply adapt to Martian time while remaining firmly rooted on Earth, human imaginations are not solely shaped by dominant narratives of space exploration. Ethnographic work with 'New Space' advocates, who invest in commercial space ventures (Valentine 2012), as well as space creators and enthusiasts, who popularise space exploration (Szolucha 2024), reveals a more nuanced picture. While these individuals may operate within the constraints of capitalist relations or navigate the uncertainties of a social spectacle, they also challenge conventional investment strategies, foster community, and actively produce shared visions of the future, thereby creating new social relations. The work of space creators, for example, not only popularises space exploration and makes it comprehensible to a global audience of enthusiasts, but also has the power to mould the public’s collective space myths. The collective imagination of outer space may, therefore, contain possibilities for new narratives of space exploration.

How does outer space impact human lives?

Space exploration leaves a visible mark on Earth, requiring diverse infrastructure for the manufacture and operation of space technologies. These facilities are often situated in locations perceived as remote or uninhabited. However, anthropological research foregrounds the stories of communities impacted by these developments, emphasising their needs, perspectives, and the structural biases that limit their agency. For example, several engaged anthropologists worked during the 1970s with the Yanadi, an Indigenous tribe in India with a nomadic lifestyle historically centred around hunting and gathering (Agrawal, Rao and Reddy 1985). This engagement occurred shortly after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had acquired the Yanadi’s traditional lands to establish a new space centre on an island off India’s eastern coast. The anthropologists documented the profound changes ISRO brought to the region, displacing the Yanadi from their traditional hunting grounds, offering employment opportunities, and creating new community facilities. By collaborating with the Yanadi and ISRO, the anthropologists helped negotiate extended land access rights for the tribe members and educated the ISRO about the social impacts of its activities on the Yanadi community.

The Yanadi case is not an isolated historical incident. Displacement or various degrees of neglect of Indigenous or disadvantaged populations during state or commercial encroachment on their territories has been a recurring theme in the construction and siting of space-related infrastructure, persisting to the present. In the 1980s, the space base in northeastern Brazil displaced Afro-Brazilian villagers, reflecting a history of class and racial inequality within the country (Mitchell 2017). In French Guiana, the construction and operation of ESA’s spaceport in Kourou continues to be entangled with the colonial history of the region (Redfield 2000) and its peculiar status as a European periphery (Korpershoek 2024). Currently, the Native American Esto’k Gna oppose the operations of a private space company for restricting the access to their traditional lands on the southern tip of Texas in the United States (Szolucha 2023). The proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the sacred mountain of Maunakea in Hawai'i, despite sustained local protest and predicted environmental impacts, is another example (Hobart 2019; Maile 2019). Anthropologists have helped to amplify the experiences and perspectives of Indigenous and disadvantaged groups, documenting the historical legacies of inequality and injustice, while exploring potential avenues for change.

Such examples have led some social scientists to formulate more sweeping critiques of space exploration efforts, characterising them as inherently colonial and exploitative (for example, Rubenstein 2022; Treviño 2023). Against such views, critical scholars propose alternative approaches to engaging with the cosmos, such as celestial wayfinding. Aiming to mirror the way Polynesians navigated the ocean and to avoid the perpetuation of colonial dynamics in space exploration, celestial wayfinding is meant to be guided by principles of sustainable settlement, informed by an animate view of the cosmos and based on a belief in the inherent value and necessary co-existence of all beings (Lempert 2021). The !Kung San people of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa have been suggested as a positive and egalitarian model for social organisation of space communities (Lee 1985). Their adaptations were based on the practice of sharing, living in a small group, and being self-sufficient for a very long time. Anthropologists have also considered the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, with their emphasis on mutual learning and reciprocal interaction, as a potential model for interstellar migration (Tanner 1985). Furthermore, alternative modes of travelling and living together that have been explored in science fiction movies also hold the potential to inspire and improve space exploration (Lempert 2014; Salazar 2023).

Queer and feminist perspectives on space exploration equally offer frameworks for reimagining it. ‘Queering the cosmos’ would involve liberating it from the constraints of established, often limited, visions of the future and opening it up to multiple possibilities (Oman-Reagan 2015). Similarly, feminist approaches to space travel challenge the presumption of heterosexuality—pervasive within the imaginaries and designs of human spaceflight—and critically examine the ideological and structural biases that lead to exclusionary and oppressive practices and imaginaries (Gál and Armstrong 2023).

While various critical approaches are being proposed to ‘reclaim outer space’ (Schwartz, Billings and Nesvold 2023) a growing body of anthropological work is emerging in parallel that challenges the seemingly monolithic character of modern space projects. On the one hand, space infrastructure developments are typically justified in the name of scientific and economic advancement for a specific community, region, or even nation. While the examples above illustrate some significant challenges and pitfalls of these justifications, space projects may mobilise a sense of hope, agency, and visions of alternative futures that extend beyond serving as an escape plan for a select few (Denning 2023). They can provide alternative visions of international cooperation and even increased ecological care.

At the same time, outer space has always held the potential for increased militarisation, neocolonialism, and extractivism. Anthropologists demonstrate that these two facets, of care and extractivism, are inextricably linked and that space exploration, while perpetuating harmful legacies, also automatically elicits alternative practices and visions of the future (see, for example, Ojani 2024). Many Mexicans, for example, reveal complex imaginaries surrounding space. They see space exploration as a pathway to economic development through technological innovation while simultaneously emphasising the need to critically reflect on the conditions that shape its achievement (Johnson 2020). Similarly, astronomers in Madagascar demonstrate that a problematic and culturally specific notion of the ‘universality of science’ can nevertheless serve as a tool for navigating inequalities on Earth (Nieber 2024). Assuming that science is to some extent universal is not just an epistemic requirement for gaining entry into an international scientific network. It is also a horizon of possibility, one that offers both hope and direction.

How does outer space influence our understanding of social reality?

Outer space not only affects people’s lives but also recalibrates their structures of understanding. Being outside Earth and thinking about the cosmos involves encountering extraterrestrial materialities and contexts that are unfamiliar or behave in unexpected ways. Living in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS), for example, removes the people involved from the familiar bounds of Earth and from usual ways of being and feeling human. The physical experience of weightlessness affects emotions and their social expression, demonstrating how gravity—a condition we typically take for granted—influences not only the human body but also emotions and social relations. This is because the effective communication of emotions and human relations depends on certain material conditions. When those are dramatically altered in such environments as outer space, a simple hug, for example, becomes a challenge because bodies behave and react differently than they would on Earth. The hug becomes a somewhat awkward experience, because bodies of astronauts struggle to align and exchange the same sense of touch they would under the conditions of gravity (Parkhurst and Jeevendrampillai 2020). Similarly, venturing beyond Earth’s atmosphere allows us to reconsider its role as a primary context, one that provides the reference points for our fundamental understandings and distinctions, such as the one between nature and culture, for example (Battaglia 2012; Valentine 2016). An anthropological engagement with outer space turns out to broaden the notions of what constitutes an ‘environment’ and to decentre our geocentric and anthropocentric perspectives (Battaglia, Valentine and Olson 2015; Helmreich 2012; Olson and Messeri 2015).

This recalibrating nature of outer space has also prompted a rethinking of anthropological methodologies (see, for example, Gorbanenko, Jeevendrampillai and Kozel 2025). Specifically, it has been suggested that anthropological research be recontextualised in ‘more-than-terran’ spaces (Olson 2023), to think about fieldwork as having significance and being localised beyond Earth, and as being entangled with entities, dynamics, and phenomena beyond Earth-based contexts. While humans’ earthly embeddedness is undeniable, an expanded methodological toolkit would acknowledge that societies already exist on a boundary between terrestrial and extraterrestrial realms. However, how radically methodologies need to be adjusted is currently somewhat under dispute. Given that people constantly negotiate their social existence through a dialogue with their social and material worlds, life on Earth may be quite mediated already and therefore not that different to study than life in space (Jeevendrampillai et al. 2023).

Ethnographic research in locations like the ISS is unlikely to occur anytime soon, given how expensive and hard it is to access. Studying Earth-based space infrastructures related to it, such as its Mission Controls, is much more feasible and can still be highly elucidating. Ethnographers can more easily enter a meeting in ground-based buildings by government agencies and companies designing space experiments or observe livestreamed conversations with ISS crews. Seemingly remote locations can thus be studied via the multiple, interconnected sites, media, and groups of people that constitute a field both up in space and here on Earth (Buchli 2020). These include the constant online presence of the ISS, multimedia archives, and communities tracking the ISS from Earth.

Space activities, both on Earth and in outer space, are dispersed across vast distances and dynamically evolving networks. Therefore, field sites are never stable entities but are better understood as sometimes-atomised and relational spaces connected through shared meanings and materialities (Timko 2024). The distributed nature of space-related sites and globally dispersed communities has led to the idea of a ‘planetary ethnography’ (Szolucha et al. 2022; 2023). This approach to research seeks to push the boundaries of representation to uncover new perspectives both by engaging with diverse social groups across different cultures and by bringing them into a comparative analysis that can reveal unexpected alliances or effect a change in perspective. These under- or unrepresented experiences and viewpoints, much like the extraterrestrial itself, should have the potential to revisit and reorient entire fields of understanding, rather than simply adding another perspective, one that remains on the periphery.

Conclusion

Although outer space remains a physically distant horizon, unreachable for most, it is closer than one may think. It plays a significant role in the everyday lives of diverse groups, from Indigenous communities to the global network of space professionals. Through their engagement with outer space and its many representations, they make communal histories, social norms, as well as distant celestial objects and phenomena more readily comprehensible. In doing so, they reshape social relations and realities here on Earth. Regardless of how they connect with the sky, people worldwide seem to actively strive to forge more intimate relationships with the cosmos, underscoring its inextricable link to human life.

But why is this connection with the universe so important? Perhaps the answer lies in viewing outer space as a social and cultural canvas, one on which individuals and communities can project their understanding of the present social order and their aspirations for the future. For example, Russian cosmonautic amateurs who build and test satellites and other space technologies hold the idea that anyone can participate in space exploration, even without government backing (Sivkov 2019). Their activities highlight the importance of merit and technological know-how in driving space exploration. Therefore, engaging with the cosmos allows them to critique the social and political realities of their country. Outer space can thus be understood as a field for critiquing current social conditions and experimenting with potential alternatives.

Popular representations of extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects (‘UFOs’) have also been interpreted as expressions of broader socio-political concerns. These include feelings of alienation and mistrust towards political representatives. Alien abduction narratives equally reflect anxieties, including concerns about racial and ethnic difference. In other depictions, extraterrestrial beings are viewed as divine, expanding the scope of human understanding beyond purely scientific explanations. Historically, ‘ufology’—the study of UFOs—emerged from anxieties surrounding military tensions and technological advancements (Battaglia 2006), a dynamic that continues to resonate today.

Public interest in the cosmos waxes and wanes, driven by the vagaries of politics and cultural trends while popular sentiment toward even the most successful space programmes is often ambiguous (Launius 2003). However, anthropological research has definitively demonstrated that people worldwide actively seek deeper and more complex connections with the cosmos. It is an inextricable part of daily life, shaping their past, co-creating their present, and prefiguring their future.

This understanding challenges the detached view of the cosmos as an outside domain, a perspective some argue was reinforced by the first images of Earth taken by astronauts of Apollo missions from the void of space (Arendt 1968; Cosgrove 1994). This seemingly detached ‘view from nowhere’ may perpetuate the notion that the cosmos is simply there for the taking, whether by technologically advanced nations or an oligarchy-controlled private sector. If technological engagement with outer space expands in the coming decades, largely fuelled by commercial and military-led space ventures, what convergences and tensions will emerge with the fundamental human drive for cosmic intimacy? One thing is certain: humanity will discover ever-new ways to imbue outer space with meaning, both on Earth and beyond.

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Note on contributor

Anna Szolucha is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of the ARIES (Anthropological Research into the Imaginaries and Exploration of Space) project at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Her research interests lie at the intersection of new technologies, natural resources, and society.

Research for this article received funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, project number 2020/38/E/HS3/00241.

Anna Szolucha, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Jagiellonian University, ul. Golebia 9, 31-007 Krakow, Poland. ORCID: 0000-0001-8938-6066

Editor:

Hanna Nieber

Palliative care

Rebecca Tishler — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 08:09:23 +0000

Edvard Munch : The Sick Child, 1927, 6th in the Series. Photo: Munch Museum

Natashe Lemos Dekker

Leiden University

Initially published 12 Oct 2023

http://doi.org/10.29164/23pallativecare

Abstract:

Palliative care has been developing since the 1960s as a form of caregiving that focuses on the relief of suffering when there is no prospect of a cure or when a patient is at the end of life. Originating in the UK and US, palliative care has been taken up by global institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO), and implemented in various cultural and socioeconomic settings. Anthropological studies have long been highlighting the wide variety of experiences and needs in illness and dying and have problematised the supposedly universal ideas behind palliative care. After a brief discussion of the historical and institutional development of palliative care, this entry highlights the links between palliative care principles and notions of a good death. It then turns to the medicalisation of death and the primacy of choice in palliative care discourses. It elaborates on anthropological studies that have observed how palliative care comes to relate to existing end-of-life care practices and the diversity with which local practitioners and care recipients give shape to this new care paradigm. Finally, it discusses various cultural and moral attitudes towards disclosure and concealment of dying as a site of friction in palliative care.

Introduction

Palliative care is commonly understood as professional caregiving that focuses on the relief of suffering when there is no prospect of a cure or at the end of life. Its central aim is to provide comfort, by focusing on symptom management and pain relief, as well as psychosocial and spiritual care. The word ‘palliative’ stems from the Latin pallium, which translates as ‘to cloak’ and is associated with the aim of providing comfort and alleviation that is inherent in palliative care. While definitions of palliative care continue to be subject of debate, as will be outlined below, the most commonly cited is the 2002 World Health Organization (WHO) definition:

Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. (84)

Derived from hospice care, palliative care has been developing since the late 1960s into a form of caregiving that is practiced in various care institutions as well as in home care settings. Palliative care has developed into an interdisciplinary field of expertise in and of its own, with prominent contributions from medical disciplines such as nursing, oncology, and geriatrics, as well as social work and social sciences, and its practical implementation is accompanied by a range of studies on best practices and the development of palliative care tools and models.

While palliative care is considered to have originated in the UK and builds on preceding developments in care for the dying in Western Europe and the US (Clark 2016), it has since then been promoted and taken up in other parts of the world. However, it cannot be assumed that palliative care is developing across the globe in the same manner and with the same effect. Hence, anthropologists have begun to study palliative care as a particular mode of end-of-life care that comes with particular sets of values and norms, exposing how it comes to exist alongside, reform, or replace existing end-of-life care structures and practices across geographical and institutional settings.

From an anthropological perspective, palliative care is approached as emerging from, and embedded in, cultural contexts, where it forms one particular way of managing illness and dying. As such, it has grown into a topic of interest both to researchers who position their work in the anthropology of death and in medical anthropology. Through immersive fieldwork, anthropologists have shed light on the lived experiences of patients, caregivers, and their networks. Taking critical as well as constructive approaches towards the paradigm of palliative care, anthropologists have asked questions such as: How is palliative care used in organisations and embedded in health systems? And how is care negotiated and what values does it reflect? Recognising, further, that death is not the great equaliser it is sometimes portrayed to be, but rather that dying is characterised by inequalities and difference, anthropologists have been interested in how access to palliative care is distributed between people of different backgrounds and across the globe. Also, anthropologists are critically assessing the use of terms like ‘dignity’, ‘quality of life’, and ‘comfort’ which are central in palliative care and are reflected in the WHO definition, and taking up the empirical question of what such terms come to mean in their local context.

In the sections that follow, and drawing on a range of anthropological studies, this entry first discusses the historical and institutional development of palliative care. It proceeds with a discussion of the ideals underlying palliative care and its connections to notions of a ‘good death’. It then turns to the medicalisation of death and the primacy of choice in palliative care discourses. Finally, reflecting on the uptake of palliative care in diverse cultural settings, it discusses various cultural and moral attitudes towards disclosure and concealment of dying as a site of friction in the palliative care paradigm.

Genealogy of palliative care

The development of palliative care can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s. It emerged as a response to the then-dominant focus on curative practices in healthcare, while patients were increasingly living with chronic conditions for which no cure was available (Clark 2007). By contrast, palliative care focuses on improving the quality of life of people who are dying or who live with a chronic condition. Although it does not exclude curative treatment, one of the key aims of palliative care has been to relieve suffering, including psychological, social, and emotional, as well as physical pain.

As founder of the first modern hospice in 1967 in the UK, Cicely Saunders is considered a pioneer in the development of palliative care (Clark 2002, 2007, 2016; Seymour 2012). Her work in oncology as a nurse and hospital almoner, and later as a medical doctor, provided her with a unique perspective on patients’ conditions. She observed a lack of pain control in cancer patients, and became concerned with what she called ‘total pain’: the suffering of patients that extends beyond physical pain and reaches to their entire being, including social, physical, mental, and emotional distress. Around the same time, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, through her work in hospitals and as a lecturer in the US, advocated a novel focus on the needs of dying patients and support for families and is credited with opening up the possibility to discuss death in Western society (Blaylock 2005; Sisk and Baker 2019). Both Saunders and Kübler-Ross have been central figures in the development of palliative care.

From the 1980s onward, palliative care rapidly developed into an area of specialisation that has been incorporated across different disciplines, including oncology, nursing, and geriatrics. In practice, palliative care is usually provided by multidisciplinary teams, involving for instance medical doctors, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and spiritual advisers. Medical associations and dedicated journals have been established to delineate the field of palliative care. Hence, palliative care is both a field of knowledge and a professional practice. The European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) was founded in 1988, the Latin American Association of Palliative Care (ALCP) in 2000, and the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN) in 2001 (Clark 2007). Additionally, palliative care has gradually become, or is in many countries in the process of becoming, embedded in national health structures, as well as in global health programmes. While palliative care was initially focussed on oncology, this has gradually broadened to other (chronic) illnesses, including HIV/AIDS, and increasing attention has been paid to the potential benefits of palliative care for older people (Davies and Higginson 2004; Visser, Borgstrom and Holti 2020). While this reflects the ‘holistic’ character of palliative care, this also implies palliative care is subject to a wide variety of interpretations, approaches, and backgrounds.

Considerable discrepancies in approaches and definitions remain, and these continue to be the subject of debate among researchers and practitioners alike (Pastrana et al. 2008). The WHO published its first definition of palliative care in 1990 and revised it in 2002. The latter (cited above) continues to be commonly used, but has since then been reformulated, both by the WHO itself and other organisations such as the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) (Radbruch et al. 2020). Additionally, many organisations that provide palliative care in practice will describe it in their own terms (Hui et al. 2012). Often, these definitions reflect in one way or another Saunders’ concept of ‘total pain’, as palliative care is described as holistic, person-centred, and provided by multidisciplinary teams, and is associated with meaning and dignity at the end of life.

However, anthropologists have shown that, within these broad characteristics, in practice the concept also remains unclear as some practitioners use the terms ‘terminal care’, ‘end-of-life care’, and ‘palliative care’ interchangeably (Lemos Dekker, Gysels and van der Steen 2017), while others explicitly differentiate them (Hui et al. 2012). Also, the use of ‘hospice care’ outside of hospice settings where others might use the term ‘palliative care’ indicates that the boundaries of the concept are not always clear.

Furthermore, the anthropological record has demonstrated that health systems and institutions are often unequally accessible, to which palliative care is no exception. The degree to which palliative care is accessible or integrated in health care systems varies widely between countries (Clark et al. 2020), and may further be influenced by a patient’s positioning in terms of class, ethnicity, and gender (Richards 2022).^{^[1]} Also, the often limited and unequally distributed availability of opiates, limitations in a patient’s mobility, and institutional structures can challenge the accessibility of palliative care (Knaul et al. 2018).^{^[2]}

As this entry will show, palliative care is embedded in diverse cultural contexts, and as such is interwoven with particular values, practices, and beliefs. Anthropological studies have underscored the wide variety of ways in which illness and dying are perceived and treated, as well as the variety of needs and expectations across social and cultural settings (Souza, Borgstrom and Zivkovic 2021; Zaman et al. 2017). This great diversity inherent in care means there is an important role for anthropologists in showing how palliative care is provided differently across cultural and institutional contexts; how people of different backgrounds, including professionals, patients, and families, each relate to it; and how they use and adapt palliative care’s key principles to fit within their own work, lives, and networks (Samuels and Lemos Dekker 2023).

Palliative care and the good death

Anthropologists have generally taken a contemplative approach to palliative care, to shed light on its underlying values and its implications at a sociocultural level. In particular, this research has underscored that palliative care is informed by ideals that are associated with a ‘good’ death. Hence, palliative care has been suggested to form a specific, institutionalised approach to operationalising ideals of a good death and to bring these into medical practice (Hart, Sainsbury and Short 1998; McNamara 2004).

Anthropological studies have demonstrated that the good death forms a moral objective that underpins people’s narratives, decisions, and actions (e.g. Hart, Sainsbury and Short 1998), whereby anthropologists have asked what a good death is to different individuals and groups, unravelling the social and cultural dynamics of how people experience, manage, and plan for the final stages of life and death (Long 2005; Seale and van der Geest 2004; Zaman et al. 2017). This body of literature has highlighted the variations as well as similarities between cultural groups with regard to their perceptions of what constitutes a good death, such as the commonly shared preference for a death without suffering. It has also shown the value that is attributed to the place, timing, and social circumstances of death (Driessen, Borgstrom and Cohn 2021; Kaufman 2005; Lemos Dekker 2018; Stonington 2012). Taken together, the aspects that are attributed to a good death in a particular cultural context reflect what people commonly value at the end of life and the societal norms regarding death and dying, and provide directives for how the end of life should be managed. As such, the good death is taken as an ethnographic object by looking at the efforts that are put into its achievement.

Ideals of a good death can thus be understood to inform a wide range of palliative care practices, discourses, and experiences. This includes, in particular, its aim to provide comfort and to relieve suffering at the end of life in psychological, social and physical domains. However, in practice this ideal can be difficult to achieve as it is linked to experiences of (bodily) decline and notions of dignity. For example, Julia Lawton’s (2000) ethnographic research in hospice wards in the UK underscores the fundamental importance of bodily deterioration, which, she suggests, has a ‘non-negotiable’ impact upon patients’ sense of self (16). Lawton highlights significant disparities between the ideology of palliative care and what she calls the bodily realities of degeneration and dying. She shows that the dying process in many cases does not conform to normative goals of a calm, pain-free, and dignified ‘good death’, and suggests that the ideological underpinnings of palliative care may offer little room for deaths that do involve pain and distress.

Furthermore, as researchers in anthropology and related disciplines have demonstrated, the place of death plays an important role in the perception of a good death. In many cultures, the home is seen as the ideal place of death, while the clinical space of the hospital is often disfavoured. Nevertheless, it is quite common for people to be hospitalised as part of care provided at the end of life. Similarly, nursing homes and long-term care institutions may not be regarded as ideal places for dying, and yet are common places of death. Hence, a discrepancy may occur between the actual and preferred place of death (Kaufman 2005; Stonington 2020; Visser 2019). Addressing these concerns, palliative care institutions and staff, the ethnographic record shows, often put great effort into creating a ‘homely’ atmosphere, a place that is familiar to patients and their relatives (Pasveer 2020; Lemos Dekker and Pols 2020). For example, Annelieke Driessen, Erica Borgstrom, and Simon Cohn (2021) describe the efforts of palliative care teams in a UK hospital to create a familiar, personal, and meaningful space for the dying person in the institutional environment, in order to make it suitable for dying—a practice the authors call ‘placing work’. Following Scott Stonington’s (2012, 2020) research in northern Thailand, home and hospital may be understood as ‘ethical locations’, as each place may hold different ethical frameworks through which death and dying are managed and valued. Stonington discusses what he calls ‘choreographing a good death,’ which refers to the strategies through which people manage the end of life. This involves planning and improvisation so as to influence the place and timing of death, whereby families make use of, and navigate, biomedical systems as well as local and communal practices of approaching death. Stonington (2020: 1-8) describes an instance of a dying person who was brought into the hospital so as to make sure they would receive all viable treatment, but was finally hurried back home to die to ensure their death would happen in the ‘right place’, reflecting ideas of the home as a moral space that would ensure the process of rebirth.

Likewise, anthropologists have demonstrated that palliative care is concerned with the timing and duration of the dying process. In her seminal ethnography, …And a time to die: how American hospitals shape the end of life (2005), Sharon Kaufman discusses how the medical bureaucratic system of hospitals in the US has become increasingly focused on the timing of death. In particular, decision-making at the end of life, such as decisions to continue or withdraw treatment, are concerned with postponing or allowing death, and can thus be seen as an attempt at exerting control over when death occurs. While her focus is on dying in hospitals in general, she notes that palliative care is integrated into hospitals as one form of end-of-life medical practice through which such questions of timing are negotiated. Although the moment of death is in many cases very difficult to predict, palliative care seeks to understand and gain control of time at the end of life. Accordingly, advance care planning (ACP) is, especially in Western contexts, often an explicit aspect of palliative care. ACP is often used in institutional care settings as a process through which patients, often in consultation with medical professionals and family members, establish their wishes and preferences to inform caregiving at later stages. While ACP in palliative care usually involves directives regarding dying and death, it may also include medical as well as psychosocial preferences in long-term care more generally. Palliative care, then, through its various tools and ACP, operates along the idea that anticipating care needs, and preparing for illness trajectories, will improve caregiving. More fundamentally, with this focus on timing, palliative care further channels the idea that an anticipated death is a controlled, and thus ‘good’, death.

This striving towards a good death is both implicitly and explicitly incorporated in the various models, tools, and practices of palliative care. Anthropological inquiry into such tools has shown that they may seek to coordinate caregiving and to transfer palliative care values in a standardised manner. Together with Erica Borgstrom, my work (Borgstrom and Lemos Dekker 2022) examines the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) as a tool that seeks to shape the dying process in accordance with ideals of what a good death is. The LCP is a document that is used to mark the onset of the ‘palliative phase’ and to communicate between care professionals that caregiving should shift to a focus on comfort and the management of specific symptoms. We draw on ethnographic research in care institutions in the UK and the Netherlands, to show that the tool is used to impart moral values, to standardise practices, and to demonstrate a sense of professionalism. Moreover, this ethnographic comparison shows that the use of such tools in practice can be expected to differ significantly from their intended use, and varies between geographic and institutional settings since they require interpretation and adaptation.

Choice and medicalisation

Palliative care continues to be promoted by some as an alternative to the hegemony of biomedicine, as it shifts attention from life-prolonging treatment to well-being and comfort. Anthropological work has investigated this seeming discrepancy between care and cure. Kaufman’s (2005) research on death and dying in hospitals in the US underscores that palliative care, with its focus on comfort, is at odds with the curative focus of hospitals. This plays out in negotiations over what kinds of ‘treatment’ are recognised and funded within the hospital system, whereby Kaufman suggests that even though most people die in hospitals, these institutions were generally unable to provide the kind of death that people would prefer. Related to this, and based on fieldwork with palliative care staff in the UK, Erica Borgstrom, Simon Cohn, and Annelieke Driessen (2020) have signalled that when palliative care is framed in contradiction to curative care, patients, families, and even medical professionals may perceive it as ‘doing nothing’. The authors show that what is seen as intervention or non-intervention depends on what practices are valued in care relations, whereby ‘palliative care becomes “nothing” when a cure is posited to be the only form of success’ (2020: 209). Accordingly, a key challenge in palliative care is to convey that withholding curative treatment is no longer taken to be a medical failure, but rather reframed as viable care at the end of life.

At the same time, palliative care is not wholly antagonistic to the medicalisation of death—that is, the process through which death is framed as a medical concern and which reflects the idea that death can be managed and controlled through medical knowledge and technological possibilities (Green 2008; Howarth 2007; Kaufman 2005, 2006). Asking how hospital medicine shapes the conditions for death, Kaufman (2005) further shows that the end of life is characterised by planning and decision-making, whereby patients and their families, in consultation with medical professionals, become responsible for often difficult choices, for instance of whether or not to continue life-prolonging treatment. As such, Kaufman writes, ‘death has entered the domain of choice’ (Kaufman 2005: 326). However, in practice, patients and their families may lack the specialised knowledge necessary to make informed decisions and may be unable to oversee the illness trajectory ahead or the consequences of (advance) decisions (Kaufman 2005). In her ethnographic study of end-of-life care in England, Borgstrom (2015) unpacks the rhetoric of choice, showing that this is intimately linked to neoliberal understandings of individual autonomy. She gives an example of a man who, despite the insistence of care professionals, refused to write down whether he preferred to be cared for at home or in an institution, because he considered this to be dependent on how his wife would cope with his care. In this case, advanced decision making did not resonate well with the uncertainty of changing care needs. Problematising the notion of choice, Borgstrom thus shows that it fails to address ‘the relational, and often subtly negotiated, nature of care’ (Borgstrom 2015: 709). Devin Flaherty (2018) also sheds light on the limitations of choice by discussing a case in the US Virgin Islands, where older adults have turned to hospice care due to lacking possibilities of receiving curative treatment. Hence, she demonstrates that the ‘choice’ to enter hospice care may be less based on an acceptance of death, than on how different forms of care are covered within the health care system. While palliative care thus incorporates a responsibility to make the right choices or establish preferences in advance, as well as ideals of individual autonomy, these studies show that such notions are not always clear-cut.

Moreover, anthropologists have demonstrated that patients may be sceptical towards decision-making, as this may invoke the fear of being unable to undo decisions or of relinquishing control (Borgstrom 2015; Zivkovic 2018). For Beverly McNamara (2004), the increased emphasis on patient autonomy and choice is at odds with the original conception of a good death in hospice and palliative care, which is based on open communication and acceptance of death. In her ethnographic research among Australian palliative care practitioners, she shows that the wishes of patients, which may be to extend curative treatment despite efficacy, were at times prioritised over palliative care principles. Accordingly, she suggests, palliative care in practice became reduced to medical symptom management, and puritan notions of a good death were replaced with a ‘good enough death’. In a similar manner, Marian Krawczyk (2021) has explored the experiences of palliative specialists in Canadian hospitals. She focuses on the affective labour of these professionals and shows how they organise patients’ dying trajectories, not only in terms of their biomedical and physical needs, but also with the aim of defining and ordering ‘appropriate’ emotional responses. In so doing, she argues that hospital palliative care can be seen as an affective economy in which ambiguity, negotiation, and conflict are not failures, but rather constitutive components of the institutional and professional employment of palliative care principles. Anthropologists have thus shown how ideology and practice merge, clash, and change over time, and how palliative care pushes against biomedical frameworks yet continues to operate within the limits and affordances of a medicalised system.

(Non-)disclosure at the end of life

A key contribution of anthropologists to the field of palliative care has been to demonstrate how seemingly universal principles and definitions are being understood, taken up, and challenged in local, sociocultural contexts, and to look in detail at how palliative care is being provided in and beyond care institutions such as hospitals and nursing homes, as well as at home (Samuels and Lemos Dekker 2023). Stonington (2020), in his work on end-of-life care in Thailand, shows that palliative care was conceived of as a new concept and discussed only in its English terminology in an otherwise Thai linguistic context, showing a glimpse of the friction in the cultural adaptation of palliative care between globally circulating discourses and locally rooted practices. This conception of palliative care, as a new way of understanding and providing care at the end of life that comes to be in dialogue with pre-existing discourses and practices, further reveals some of the normative aspects of palliative care. Anthropologists have been calling this normativity into question, viewing palliative care alongside other resources and care practices (Stonington 2020; Zaman et al. 2017).

A clear example of how principles of palliative care may clash with existing care practices is the way in which people do, or do not, talk about death and dying. Palliative care, as indicated above, involves a focus on anticipating a patient’s disease trajectory and the process of dying. A common principle is that talking openly about the end of life between patients, families, and professionals improves decision making, whereby the patient’s knowledge that they are dying is thought to foster their autonomy. Stonington’s work in Thailand shows that, in the process of choreographing death, medical professionals and family members sought to maintain the moral spirit of the dying person and maintain hope by not disclosing diagnosis and prognosis. Similarly, McNamara (2004) demonstrated in the Australian context that the ideal of open discussion and acceptance of death may not resonate with a patient’s wishes. Along these lines, several anthropologists have demonstrated that cultures of end-of-life talk vary widely, and that letting a patient know they are dying is far from being a universally accepted good practice. To the contrary, in many cases discretion—not sharing a diagnosis or prognosis with either the patient themselves or with outsiders—has been argued to be perceived as a form of care and ethical practice (Banerjee 2020; Livingston 2012; Stonington 2020). Already in 1965, and based on fieldwork in US hospitals, sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss published their volume Awareness of dying, in which they described interactions between staff, family, and dying patients, asking who knew about the terminal nature of the patient’s condition, and what each suspected the other to know. Through the concept of ‘awareness contexts’, they showed the nuanced ways in which forms of disclosure and concealment of dying may intersect, and that whether, how, and when to talk about dying is a moral question that involves professional ethics as well as personal values and experiences.

Dwaipayan Banerjee (2020) discusses similar dynamics of speech and concealment, or disclosure and discretion, as crucial aspects of the social relations that are formed and reshaped around life-threatening illness in his ethnographic research with an NGO that provides palliative care to cancer patients in Delhi. Giving a prognosis and a diagnosis of, in this case, cancer, can open up certain possibilities, including access to palliative care. However, it can also foreclose others, as it may result in stigmatisation and a loss of livelihood. In one example, Banerjee describes how the NGO deliberately parked their vans at a distance from the home of the patients they visited so they would not be seen by neighbours, with the aim of preventing stigmatisation of the patient. Such an exercise of discretion reflects a broader set of practices, in which patients, families, and professionals would avoid explicitly talking about cancer, the ineffectiveness of further treatment, or the prognosis of dying. Banerjee suggests that ‘knowing what not to say allowed for them to continue to live in the present, without compromising all hope of the future’ (2020: 41), thus showing the potentiality and ethical concern that may be enveloped in acts of non-disclosure.

Conclusion

Since its early development in the UK and US, palliative care has been taken up by global institutions such as the WHO and has been implemented in various cultural and socioeconomic settings. Hence, anthropologists have observed how palliative care comes to relate to existing end-of-life care practices, showing the diversity with which local practitioners and care recipients give shape to this new care paradigm. From these studies, palliative care emerges as a field of knowledge and practice that draws attention to the needs of dying and chronically ill patients and their networks. Often through the efforts of staff, palliative care has been carving a space for a particular focus on the relief of suffering within hospitals and care institutions. Palliative care, then, is not a single, clearly bounded idea, but a concept that is on the move. In many places, palliative care is relatively new, being advocated by a diverse group of medical professionals, and only gradually being embedded in health care policies. By looking in detail at how medical professionals communicate with patients and families about illness and the end of life, and the ways in which families among themselves do, or do not speak about this, anthropologists have been able to demonstrate that there are different ways of dealing with diagnosis and prognosis, and that what people find important at the end of life differs across cultural contexts. Accordingly, not only do care practices change in dialogue with this new approach, but also the concept itself is bound to be adapted.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank her colleagues in the Globalizing Palliative Care team, Dr. Annemarie Samuels, Hanum Atikasari, and Shajeela Shawkat, for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this text. She is grateful for the support of the previous editors of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology and the current editors of the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, as well as for the insightful and supportive comments from the anonymous reviewers. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 851437).

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Note on contributor

Natashe Lemos Dekker is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on death, dying, and end-of-life care, and dynamics of time and future-making in The Netherlands and Brazil. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Amsterdam and has published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Death Studies, and BMC Palliative Care, among others. She is a board member of the Medical Anthropology Europe Network (MAE-EASA).

Dr. Natashe Lemos Dekker, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, the Netherlands. N.Lemos.Dekker@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

ORCID: 0000-0001-5523-4523

[1] Within the field of palliative care, increasing attention is paid to diversity and inclusion. For example, the theme of the 2023 EAPC World Congress was “Equity and Diversity”. https://eapccongress.eu/2023/. Accessed 29 September 2023.

[2] World Health Organization. 2020. “Palliative care.” https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/palliative-care. Accessed 2 November 2021.

Editor:

Riddhi Bhandari

History

Rebecca Tishler — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 12:31:35 +0000

Eric Hirsch

Brunel University London

Initially published 29 Nov 2021

http://doi.org/10.29164/21history

Abstract:

Anthropology and history are inseparable, sharing concerns with societies other than the one we currently inhabit—whether in time or in space. This entry considers how the relation between anthropology and history developed since the late nineteenth century when anthropology professionalised as a discipline. Initially, anthropology was wedded to a form of history that was conjectural, based on hypothetical ideas of societal development deriving from evolution or diffusion. Thus, societies were often held to progress over time, in ways comparable to biological evolution, or they were held to develop through adoption of sociocultural traits from one or several culture centres. Criticism of this conjectural history came from within both anthropology and history. For a period of several decades, then, anthropology had a relatively detached relation from history, but by the mid-twentieth century this all changed. Anthropology was now understood as analogous to historiography—to writing history—as both seek to understand another society or culture and translate it into terms of one’s present society. Later, the influences of colonialism and global capitalism on the societies studied by anthropologists were given greater prominence, as was the issue of understanding societies in historical time, i.e. as subject to change over time. However, the supremacy of historical knowledge and historical time was subsequently questioned, as anthropologists asked whether all people should be seen to exist in a single and secular historical time that encompasses other kinds of time. In contrast to the single frame of historical time, with its radical separation of past and present, greater recognition is being given to the multifaceted temporal relationships of past, present, and future as diverse peoples have distinct ways of valuing and communicating temporal categories and their interconnections. Anthropology thus raises the question of whether everything can or should be historicised.

Introduction

Anthropology has a complex yet intimate relation with history; at times close, at other times more distant. In understanding this relation, one can trace the theoretical and empirical interests that have shaped anthropology, and one can learn about the tensions that mark the interplay of history and the social sciences more broadly. By history, reference is made to the study of the past and how, through understanding a particular past, one is able to account for specific changes in a given society. Mainstream contemporary historical practice involves the study of archives and documents from a past time that provide insights into social life at that time and how that social life has changed. Oral history is another form, where accounts of the past are narrated by knowledgeable persons and these narratives are then used as sources for understanding past times and social change. Ethnohistory is an interdisciplinary approach to indigenous perceptions and understandings of the past drawing on anthropology, history, and archaeology. There is also an older kind of historical practice known as ‘conjectural history’ which enabled historians and anthropologists to speculate on the nature of historical events for which no documents or material evidence existed.

Anthropology’s relation with history has taken various forms and is discussed in the sections that follow. What emerges is a series of debates about the appropriate focus of anthropological study, and how dimensions of the past and its representation are to be incorporated into sociocultural analysis. Some of the complexities of this relation are especially evident when one considers the first fifty years or so of anthropology as a professional discipline. During that time, in the late nineteenth century, anthropology was wedded to a kind of conjectural history which was subsequently displaced. By the beginning of the twentieth century, an emphasis on societies in the present became established as anthropology’s focus. However, this ‘presentism’ was subsequently criticised as it risked ignoring the influence of the past. Anthropology and history came to be understood as inseparable. As the impact of a historical perspective grew in anthropology, including the recognition of colonialism as an intrinsic part of that history, there emerged a critique of the Western assumption regarding the separation of past and present and their causal relations as the foundation of historical inquiry. This was perceived as a provincial, European notion and one that had to be transcended. Parallel to this critique was one concerning the status of historical knowledge: is history a superior form of knowledge, or is it just another form of myth? Finally, a hotly-debated issue that arose was whether people around the world exist in a secular, historical time or whether this view is Eurocentric and our ideas about history need to be rethought.

Conjectural history and its critique

When anthropology began to professionalise in the late nineteenth century—discarding its amateur status—it was heavily influenced by two ideas: evolution and diffusion. The form of evolution prominent in anthropology was one according to which all societies progressed—‘evolved’—to a higher and improved state. A group of anthropologists in Britain and the United States, namely John Lubbock, Henry Maine, John M. McLennan, Lewis H. Morgan, and Edward B. Tylor created a coherent discourse about this evolutionary progress. They held that societies evolved over time and that a direct advancement could be determined from ‘primitive society’ through varied intermediary stages to ‘modern society’. Anthropologists, they claimed, were to study the ‘primitive societies’ seen to lie at the lower rung of this hierarchy.

Diffusion in anthropology, by contrast, saw societies develop through contact, where borrowings of ideas, techniques, and institutions ‘diffused’ between them. Versions of diffusionist ideas were developed by figures such as Fritz Graebner in Germany and Clark Wissler in the United States while Grafton Elliot Smith in Britain proposed an extreme version that isolated Egypt as the basis of all civilisations (see Kuper 2005). The German view was that cultural change was an outcome of the mixture of peoples. William H.R. Rivers refined this programme arguing that the only consistent evidence of intermixture of peoples was what he called ‘social structure’, e.g. marriage rules, whereas elements of material culture could be adopted informally. Therefore, studies of social structure afforded the most reliable data of migration and diffusion. Based on a range of empirical material and theorising, Rivers argued that patrilineal succession and chieftainship in Melanesian society, for example, were the outcome of immigrant influences on what was a previous evolutionary stage of society. Rivers’ interest in diffusion enabled him to account as well for evolution (1922).

These evolutionary ideas in anthropology were subject to critique from within mainstream history at the time. Notable here is the historian Frederic Maitland who was critical of the evolutionary ideas influencing anthropology, as there was no empirical evidence that such different evolutionary ‘stages’ in social development actually existed. For example, supposed ‘laws’ were established by the above-mentioned group of anthropologists advocating that the original form of society was based on matriarchal principles which then ‘evolved’ to one based on patriarchal principles. However, systematic evidence for matriarchal roots in patriarchal societies could not be found.

At the same time, Maitland argued that anthropology had to become more like history in the sense of avoiding generalisations, examining each case carefully because local circumstances are almost certainly crucial, and abandoning the belief in preconceived universal laws of progress. He famously wrote: ‘My own belief is that by and by anthropology will have the choice between being history and being nothing’ (Maitland 1911: 295). Maitland was a central figure in the professionalisation of history in England (Goldstein 1990). He was a ‘master of detail’ who swept aside the futile dream of writing a single, universal history (Collingwood 1961 [1946]: 127). Maitland’s remark about anthropology and history has been cited by numerous anthropologists over the decades to emphasise the close relation between the two disciplines.^[1]

The conception of history Maitland espoused is called ‘historicism’: ‘the idea that to understand anything it has to be seen both as a unity and in its historical development’ (Chakrabarty 2008: 6; cf. Mandelbaum 1971: 42). As Charles Stewart notes, the logic of historicism is that ‘current happenings may be seen as outcomes of prior events and present events as belonging to the past as time flows on’ (2012: 1). Historicism also insists that the past must be understood in its own terms; it has become a key term in modern historiography.^[2]

During the first half of the twentieth century, a new generation of anthropologists in Britain soon viewed ideas of evolution and diffusion as ‘pseudo-history’. In particular, the ‘founding fathers’ of modern British social anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, in their different ways found the ideas of the previous generation of anthropologists misleading. Although neither ever explicitly mentioned Maitland, the direction they took anthropology inevitably turned its back on the old form of history applied by their predecessors while practicing and advocating a form of anthropology more in line with Maitland’s emphasis on detailed empirical research.

Both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were opposed to the conjectural kind of history previously conducted because the evidence supporting either evolution or diffusion, as noted above, did not exist. For example, although life expectancy in many societies may increase over time with better provision of health care and improved nutrition this does not mean that societies necessarily progress through fixed stages of evolutionary or even economic progress (cf. Rostow 1960). What mattered, according to Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, was not the past and what might have happened then, but the present; how societies ‘functioned’—how they made living together achievable—and, in Radcliffe-Brown’s case, the structure of that functioning.

American anthropology around this same time was debating the extent to which its practice of anthropology was itself a form of history. Franz Boas, the ‘founding father’ of American anthropology, was critical of evolutionism, yet he saw anthropology as fundamentally a historical science, one ‘which centres in the attempt to understand the individual phenomena rather than in the establishment of general laws’ (1932: 612). Boas’ historical analysis operated on a very limited scale, making cautious historical reconstructions, similar to ‘microhistory’, in that they captured the fleeting moment (see Faubion 1993: 38). This was a form of history in line with what Maitland advocated, although again, Boas never referred to him directly. Whether such microhistory can be related more easily to the past than can the ‘macrohistory’ of evolutionism and diffusionism has remained a topic of debate (see Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 9).

Boas’s protégé Alfred Kroeber placed more emphasis on historical reconstruction using archaeological data to establish what cultures may have existed. As an example of this, he cites the case of ‘pottery figurines which are found from western Mexico to Venezuela and Peru and from which as principal evidence there has been reconstructed an Archaic Middle American horizon or type of culture’ (Kroeber 1931: 151). He suggests that the demonstration of these figurines at several locations given their resemblances provides ‘evidence of the spread of a common culture, in spite of local variations’. Kroeber criticised Boas for not developing temporal sequences to the historical issues he encountered in his research or trying to infer or reconstruct the past of a culture (1966: 109). For his part, Boas argued he was not adverse to historical reconstruction but the reconstruction had to be cautious, avoiding sweeping generalisations.^[3] It was also observed that although Boas acknowledged that the dynamics of a society or culture were the result of historical processes, he did not hold that these dynamics were fully determined by their history. Rather, like Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, Boas saw it was crucial to understand the functioning of a society or culture aside from its history (Hoernlé 1985 [1933]: 9).

These varied historical approaches were assessed by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963 [1958]). He reiterated the conjectural nature of evolutionist and diffusionist studies and even included here the work of Kroeber, among others, with their ‘more modest and rigorous studies… of the distribution of certain cultural traits in limited areas’ (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 6). Lévi-Strauss argued that reconstructions of the past were plausible, but also deceptive. For example, the existence of an Archaic Middle American culture mentioned above remains highly contested until today. Lévi-Strauss also emphasised that reconstructions of the past tell the reader nothing about the conscious or unconscious processes of the actual people who acquired certain institutions. Were they invented, a modification of previous institutions, or borrowed from elsewhere (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 6)? To support this point, Lévi-Strauss considered the example of dual organisation, a type of social structure often found in America, Asia, and Oceania. It is characterised by the division of the social group into two halves or ‘moieties’ whose corresponding members have a variety of relations ranging from the intimate to the hostile. He rules out evolutionist and diffusionist interpretations of their existence for the reasons mentioned above. According to Lévi-Strauss, it is clear that historical factors account in part for dual organisation in any social context, yet this history might not be available to the ethnographer studying the particular society, and its exact importance for the institutions in question is hard to determine. Dilemmas of this sort—how to account for the existence of a particular institution or practice—are faced by all anthropologists (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 10).

History and anthropology as ‘inseparable’

Nonetheless, Lévi-Strauss argues that history and ethnography are closely allied—‘inseparable’—as they share a concern with societies other than the one we currently inhabit (1963 [1958]: 23). The otherness may be in time (history), however small, or remoteness in space, regardless of how distant (ethnography). Both seek to ‘reconstruct’—through historical causation and narrative or through ethnographic description and interpretation—what has or is happening in the society being studied (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 16). Lévi-Strauss quotes the famous statement by Marx: ‘[People] make their own history, but they do not know that they are making it’ (1963 [1958]: 23). This justifies, Lévi-Strauss observes, ‘first, history and, second anthropology’.

A similar point is made by Edward Evans-Pritchard. For all the supposed disregard of history by his anthropology colleagues (see below), Evans-Pritchard asks whether social anthropology is not ‘itself a kind of historiography’ (1962: 22). The parallel between disciplines exists in the forms of research and how this is then transmitted: the anthropologist ‘seeks to understand the significant overt features of a culture and to translate them into terms of [her/his] culture’ after living with the people for an extended period of time (Evans-Pritchard 1962: 23). The historian, he suggests, ‘lives’ in his archives and documents for an extended period of time and seeks to accomplish the same kind of translation. Both are equally selective in the material they choose to use. In making this argument, Evans-Pritchard invokes Maitland’s dictum cited above and he develops themes also present in the work of Lévi-Strauss. Evans-Pritchard does mention some work among British anthropologists that adopt a historical perspective, such as John Barnes (1951) and Ian Cunnison (1951). Among these should also be included his own history of the Sanusiya Order, an order of Sufis who are Sunni or Orthodox Muslims (Evans-Pritchard 1949). His book focuses on the Sanusi of Cyrenaica, the eastern coastal region of Libya. He gained a familiarity with the region, its Bedouin people, and the Order during the Second World War when he was posted there as part of his military service. Given this, it was not possible for him to carry out systematic studies of an anthropological kind, but his close contact with the Bedouin enabled him to read the literature that forms the basis of his study (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 7).

On the whole, Evans-Pritchard is critical of the lack of attention to historical matters by his contemporaries. He argues that historical awareness is vital for satisfactory understanding in a particular field or in general: ‘… those who ignore history condemn themselves to not knowing the present, because historical development alone permits us to weigh and to evaluate in their respective relations the elements of the present’ (Evans-Pritchard 1962: 56). This is an explicitly Western view of history’s significance and one not necessarily shared cross-culturally, an issue returned to later.

Evans-Pritchard’s critique of conventional anthropological practice and what he saw as its lack of interest in history was itself subjected to critique (see Smith 1962). The question was raised of ‘[w]hether anthropologists should be historians’ (Schapera 1962). This question suggests that a distinction needs to be made between the social present, which the anthropologist studies, and the social past, which is the interest of the historian. The anthropologist’s research is conducted in the social present, but in order to understand that present, the anthropologist may need to consider the social past, conventionally studied by the historian (Schapera 1962: 145). It is noted that Evans-Pritchard’s (1949) own historically-oriented book on the Sanusi is not based on anthropological research conducted while he was resident in Cyrenaica. Rather, it is a study of the origins and development of that Order. What would Evans-Pritchard have said about the Order’s social past had he written instead a study of its social present (Schapera 1962: 152)?

The more general point to be taken from this debate includes the insight that the relevance of history and the sort of history deployed depend on the kinds of problems being examined (Schapera 1962: 152). Many of the anthropologists that worked in Southern Africa, for example, who were trained by Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, studied people that were heavily influenced by European colonialism (e.g. Hunter 1936). The historical changes that resulted could not be ignored and anthropologists considered in their analyses when, how, and why historic change had occurred (Schapera 1962: 145). These anthropologists, then, situated their ethnographies in a social context shaped by the history of colonialism.

Some years before Evans-Pritchard’s critique, Edmund Leach also addressed a tension in Evans-Pritchard’s writings between a focus on the present purposes and social relationships between people (viz. a ‘functionalist social equilibrium’), such as his book The Nuer (1940) and Evans-Pritchard’s advocacy for the use of history. How could the inconsistencies between these two positions be resolved? Leach’s ethnography Political systems of Highland Burma (1954) provided an answer. He argued that explaining political life with reference to a social equilibrium, as proposed by scholars focusing on the purposes of social action known as ‘functionalists’, was an ‘as if’ description. It is ‘as if’ because it relates to ideal models rather than real societies; ideal models created and held in unique ways by both the people under study and the anthropologist. In the case of the Kachin people of Leach’s study, there were three relevant political forms: an egalitarian form of political life referred to as ‘gumlao’, a chiefly or hierarchical form known as ‘gumsa’ form - a form that seeks to imitate, when the opportunity arises, the neighbouring Shan state on the horizon. These political forms were in recurrent transformation, and Leach draws on historical documentation to describe this over an extended time period. His book seeks to ‘present a convincing model of what happens over time when such functionalist or “as if” systems interact’ (Leach 1954: 285). Like Lévi-Strauss, Leach also shows how history and ethnography are thus inseparable, but via a different route to that outlined by Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss 1963 [1958]: 18; cf. Comaroff & Comaroff 1992: 22-3).

Diverse ways of understanding and experiencing history

Although several of the anthropologists cited by Isaac Schapera (1962) considered the historical changes introduced by European influence in Southern Africa societies, colonialism as a specific historical form was not itself analysed. Talal Asad, writing in the early 1970s, notes the ‘strange reluctance’ most professional anthropologists have in sincerely considering ‘the power structure within which their discipline has taken shape’ (1973: 15). He highlights the unequal power relation between Western societies and those societies conventionally studied by anthropology, an encounter which goes back to the ‘emergence of bourgeois Europe’ and of which ‘colonialism is merely one historical moment’ (Asad 1973: 16).

One form of history that was trying to address this shortcoming is ‘ethnohistory’. Its creation is bound up with the particular nature of settler colonialism in the United States and the establishment of the Indian Claims Commission, which served as an arbiter between Native American groups and the federal government between 1946 and 1978. Ethnohistory’s origins were in the law courts to adjudicate indigenous land rights. It was necessary to decide what constituted an ‘identifiable group’ and to establish historical continuity between such groups that had signed treaties decades before that of present activists. Particular contemporary Native American peoples had to make the case that they had not ‘changed’ in order to be successful in court, so paradoxically they had to exist ‘outside of history’ in order to be identified as groups that could demonstrate their historical continuity. Ethnohistorians were thus left with the task of mediating between different notions of ‘history’—Native American and Euro-American (Harkin 2010: 116-8). In very general terms, some of the difference hinges on the idea of the past as a living ancestral presence (Native American) as found in the landscape and the moral power of ancestral place names (see Basso 1996), and one where the past (history) is dead and gone (Euro-American). Archaeologists, for example, continue to speak of ‘prehistory’ for any Native American people before European contact, denying history and historical agency to Native American peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans.

In addition, beginning in the early twentieth century, anthropologists argued that no value could be attached to Native American oral traditions as their ‘truth value’ was uncertain (see Lowie 1915). Thus, Native Americans were denied a form of historical awareness which, in turn, became the focus and principle of ethnohistorical method by mid-century (Harkin 2010: 119). The emergence of ethnohistory also called attention more forcefully to the existence of colonial power relations and their effects on native peoples, as well as a re-evaluation of the importance of oral traditions (see Cohn 1987; Vansina 1965).

American anthropologists, like their British counterparts, began to evaluate the wider ramifications of colonialism and anthropological inquiry. The ‘colonial situation’ was not viewed as ‘impact’ or ‘culture contact’ but one in which the ‘the European colonist [whether traders, missionaries or administrators] and the indigene are united in one analytic field’ (Cohn 1987: 44). The anthropologist deploys such an analytical field to show how indigenous peoples become incorporated into diverse colonial and capitalist relations of power and expropriation (cf. Kaplan 1995: 208; Stoler 2002: 105). To ignore this situation ‘is to trivialise the experiences of the natives’ (Cohn 1987: 44; see Wiener 1995: 11; cf. Geertz 1980). Certainly by the 1980s an historical perspective is foregrounded in much anthropological inquiry, no more so than in Eric Wolf’s groundbreaking book Europe and the people without history (1982). Adopting a Marxist framework, he describes how the history of European colonial expansion to all corners of the globe since the late fifteenth century, in search of wealth as well as the production and trade of commodities, simultaneously shaped the histories of diverse native peoples (cf. Sahlins 1988; Wallerstein 1974). The explicit global perspective at the core of the book highlights the intricate connections created by capitalist and indigenous modes of production and eschews a focus on self-contained societies and cultures unaffected by wider political and economic forces. For example, in one chapter of the book, Wolf shows how the commercial routes of the fur trade stretched across most of what is now Canada and the northern United States, incorporating numerous Native American peoples (e.g. Cree, Ojibwa, etc.) who supplied the furs valued by Europeans and which transformed, in turn, these societies. The book’s title is ironic: ‘[t]here are thus… no people without history, no peoples – to use Lévi-Strauss’s phrase – whose histories have remained “cold”’ (Wolf 1982: 385).

Wolf’s reference to Lévi-Strauss’s (1978 [1973]) distinction between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ societies has been generally misunderstood (cf. Bloch 1998: 109). Lévi-Strauss does not suggest that some societies have history while others do not. Rather, the distinction between ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ was used as a metaphor to express different relations with historical change. ‘Cold societies’ seek to annul the effects of historical influences through their social institutions, thus sustaining a stable continuity; ‘hot societies’, by contrast, embrace historical change and perceive its effects as the basis of societal development (Lévi-Strauss 1966 [1962]: 234; 1990 [1971]: 607; Gow 2001: 310-2). The Western ideology of progress is, for example, a potent expression of this ‘hotness’ (cf. Löwith 1949).

The distinction between the synchronic and diachronic study of people’s lives has been similarly commonly misinterpreted. Radcliffe-Brown first introduced these terms into anthropology (see Schapera 1962: 144; cf. Evans-Pritchard 1962: 61). For him, a synchronic description refers to an account of a ‘form of social life’ (a particular collection of human beings) at a specific time that abstracts from that social context its empirically ‘enduring characteristics’ (e.g. rules of marriage). Diachronic, by contrast, is an account of the ‘systematic change’ that has occurred to the form of social life over a period (Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 4; Barnes 1971: 542). Lévi-Strauss’s use of these terms is different. Synchronic, for Lévi-Strauss, concerns the ‘principle of regularity’, e.g. that a spoken language at any moment in time has an orderliness that allows it to be understood and communicated. By contrast, diachronic is the accidental and particular. Again, drawing on the example of language, languages continually change due to unintentional circumstances, such as new expressions being introduced, and the individual ways a language is expressed. Lévi-Strauss’s use of these terms derives from the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure: synchrony is like langue (collective language), diachrony is like parole (individual speech)—analogous to stable continuity and historical contingency.

Lévi-Strauss deploys synchronic and diachronic analysis in his monumental set of volumes known as Mythologiques (1964-1971). The study of myth he undertakes appears to be the opposite of an interest in history, as there are no dates or chronology. However, myths exist because of history—in a comparable way that language (langue) exists because of speech (parole) (and vice versa) (see Gow 2001: 11). Myths ‘generate the appearance of stability, an illusion of timelessness that cannot be affected by changes in the world, but they do so by means of their ceaseless transformation’ (Gow 2001: 11). In order to sustain a coherence of meaningfulness in social life, myths transform in response to a variety of historical events and it is these subtle changes in myth that make it appear as if there has been no change. It is the analysis of these transformations, moving from one people to the next over two continents, which enabled Lévi-Strauss to examine a complex historical phenomenon, i.e. the past peopling of the Americas. This is a process that occurred in historical time where no archival documents are available but where archaeology and historical linguistics provides evidence to support Lévi-Strauss’s analysis (see Lévi-Strauss 1990 [1971]).

Marshall Sahlins (1981; 1985) sought to historicise Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism (i.e. his study of the structure of human thought and social organisation) by showing how cultural structures order history (in particular historic events) and conversely. His well-known studies of Captain Cook’s sojourn among Hawaiians are an illustration. In that example, Sahlins focuses on the dichotomy between ‘the contingency of events [Cook’s appearance among Hawaiians] and the recurrence of structures [Hawaiian culture]’ (1985: xiii). Structures are understood to coordinate events. In other words, ‘[c]ulture is historically grounded, its constructs (metaphors [historical metaphors]) embodied in events and occasions, but practice has its own dynamics, and what really takes place generates novel myths [mythical realities]’ (Strathern 1996: 124). In order to understand the killing of Cook by Hawaiians, Sahlins argues this event needs to be seen in relation to a previous set of events which precipitated Cook’s demise. The first event is the Makahiki festival and the second is Cook’s return to the island not long after departing following the festival. In the Makahiki, a cosmological drama about political appropriation unfolds. The fertility of the land is renewed and reclaimed by the lost god-chief Lono. But this is supplanted by the ruling chief and the chief’s sacrificial cult of Ku. Cook’s visit to the Islands corresponded with the festival and the return of Lono. The treatment he received from Hawaiians matched the fixed order of ritual events in the Makahiki (Sahlins 1981: 17).

Lono and Ku were rivals for Hawaiian power. When Cook departed after his second visit, it meant his work of fertility renewal was done. Unfortunately, not long after departing, one of Cook’s ships sprung a foremast and the vessels had to return to Hawaii. Cook as Lono was now perceived as a threat to chiefly power. The subsequent killing of Cook, Sahlins argues, was not premeditated by the Hawaiians; neither was it an accident. He suggests it ‘was the Makahiki in an historical form’ (Sahlins 1981: 24). In other words, according to Sahlins, the cultural structure (Makahiki festival) orders events (Cook’s killing). Sahlins’ description of an historic event attempts to reproduce for Europeans (Cook and his crew) and anthropologists what is also attributed to the Hawaiians. Yet is this how the Hawaiians perceived the ‘events’? Would they have been registered as events in such a historical scheme (Strathern 1990)? Or, rather were the ‘events’ registered as ‘performances, in the images they strive to convey, and thereby in how they present the effects of social action to themselves’ (Strathern 1990: 28, emphasis removed; cf. Lederman 1986; Neumann 1992)? What Sahlins’ analysis does is not so much historicise structure as show how a unique series of events are amenable to structuralist analysis. In doing so, the events are explained by being put into their historical context—a chronology is created, in the sense that they are embedded in Western historical time.

Out of time

An interest in bringing societies into history and historical time is connected with what has been characterised as the problem of ‘coevalness’. This is the problem that the people studied by anthropology are often placed in another time, that of the ‘ethnographic present’ (Fabian 1983: 31). Synchronic forms of analysis potentially place the object of anthropological study in a time different from the anthropologists—such approaches are atemporal, anthropologist and native are not coeval, not in the same time. The issue of coevalness is also connected to the absence of historical time in some anthropological accounts whereby a society is represented as if unaffected by substantial historical change. From this standpoint a consideration of history does not have an essential influence on the social life being studied (see Thomas 1996: 5).

A range of studies that responded to these concerns and incorporated a historical time perspective appeared from the 1980s onwards (see Cole 2001; Ohnuki-Tierney 1987; Ortner 1989; Parmentier 1987; Price 1983, 1990, among numerous others). Notable among these is Jean Comaroff’s (1985) historical study of power and resistance among the Tshidi of South Africa. Over a period of one hundred and fifty years, their local independent chiefdom became a rural periphery within the South African state. For over eighty years they were part of a poorly paid labour market but still dependent on their own agricultural production. The Tshidi have also been subject to Christian missionisation starting one century and a half earlier. Comaroff’s study traces the interchange of Protestantism and proletarianisation which crystallised the Tshidi’s consciousness of inequality and constituted the basis for challenging and resisting their subordination. The forces of state power made explicit political expression difficult, however, ‘the submission to authority celebrated by the Christian faith was transformed into a biblically validated defiance’ (Comaroff 1985: 2). Such defiance was concealed and coded, and Comaroff’s study discloses its logic and enduring historical significance.

David Sutton’s (1998) study of indigenous notions of history on the Greek island of Kalymnos also responds to the above concerns about history and coevalness. It explores the myriad ways the past forms part of how the island denizens interpret the present—how the past is thus active and alive in the present. It reveals a distinct form of historical consciousness. Sutton shows, for example, how at local level the indigenous word for ‘histories’ translates as disputes, quarrels and acts of shame, such as stealing or sexual infidelities, that disrupt the conventional pattern of social life. For a person or family to ‘have history’ indicates they have a ‘stained’ name due to past misconduct of a sexual, social, or financial nature. Sutton reveals such histories—as disruptive events—operate as well at national level, as in the collaboration with the Italian Occupation of the island.

In Mahajanga, Madagascar, the idea of ‘bearing’ history is the focus of Michael Lambek’s (2002) study. Bearing here is a kind of embodied history that takes the form of spirit possessions. The spirits that possess the Mahajanga’s mediums happen in the medium’s houses throughout the area and in the course of their possession a juxtaposition of distinct historical epochs occurs. As the spirits that possess and speak through the mediums are usually ancestral members of the royal clan, Lambek argues that spirit mediums sanctify the present through the ancestral past. Conventionally, only royals were entitled to history in this island context, but over time this history has become more widely disseminated through the mediums that bear and articulate it. The mediums live in and with history and Lambek’s study focuses on the multiple dimensions of this bearing, including the ethical activity and power relations that such bearing implies (cf. Lambek 2018).

Often, the intention of the authors is to describe the ‘making of history’ by the people so described. They draw attention to human capacity to intervene in it, as ‘history is not simply something that happens to people, but something they make’ (Ortner 1984: 159). In contrast to Wolf’s (1982) historical account, where the focus is on a global system in the making over centuries and its local effects, the emphasis of writers such as Sherry Ortner is on the historical agency or practice of local peoples. The historian Reinhart Koselleck has noted that the very idea of ‘making history’ is historical and could not have been formulated before Napoleon and certainly not before the French Revolution: ‘[O]nly since around 1780 was it conceivable that [history] could be made’ (2004 [1979]: 193-4). It is both a modern experience and expectation ‘that one is increasingly capable of planning and also executing history’. Clearly, people have always planned what they do. However, to plan explicitly to ‘make history’ is an idea that was possible to articulate at a distinct time and place. Only in the late eighteenth century was one able to talk of history in general or history in and for itself—history as an ‘objectless singular’. Previously histories had existed in the plural, and history as an expression was plural (e.g. the history of England, the history of religion, etc.). When anthropologists speak of people ‘making history’, even metaphorically, it raises the problem of attributing to people a capacity and outlook that is distinctly Western and one of fairly recent origin. An interest in viewing actors as active no doubt arises from the perceived menace of potentially homogenising world capitalism, colonialism, and post-colonialism, and writers such as Ortner and Sahlins have sought to demonstrate this has not been the case. Asad suggests this is ‘prima facie a reasonable claim, although it does not tell us whether, and if so how, local peoples make their own history’ (1993: 7).

The flipside of the problem of coevalness is the issue of ‘homochronism’: ‘a displacement of those people who are ethnographically represented out of their temporality and their assimilation into academic discourses of history’ (Birth 2008: 7). In other words, it is the problem of establishing a single, all-embracing set of time-based tropes. This makes sense if we are wedded to a linear conception of time with a clear distinction between past and present. However, it does not apply if a peoples’ understanding of the past and its relation to the present are different than Western ideas of history. Michael Taussig (1980) provides an instance of this potential problem. His work focuses on mining and plantation labour in South America, connecting folk ideas of the devil with Marxist notions of class consciousness. When Taussig discusses the sugar plantations in western Columbia, his narrative is marked by dates and periods to record the relations between Africans, Indians, and Europeans. Contrasting his account with that of Joanne Rappaport’s (1990) discussion of the construction of history and time among the Páez in Columbia (Taussig 1980: 42-45), the question arises whether Taussig might be imposing his temporal and chronological sensibilities on his ethnographic subjects (Birth 2008: 10). This issue raises the possibility that a particular conception of history and its representation of time are perceived as privileged forms of understanding that anthropologist might be too readily prostrating to.

Questioning history; the significance of historicity

In a debate with Jean Paul Sartre, Lévi-Strauss (1966 [1962]: 245-69) famously questioned the superiority attributed to historical knowledge. He claimed that historical knowledge was partial in the sense of having a bias even if it declares not to be. He uses the example of the French Revolution. Writing a history of such an event cannot both be a revolutionary Jacobin account and an aristocratic account. It will always remain incomplete and subjective (Lévi-Strauss 1966 [1962]: 257-8). This is true to a greater or lesser degree of all history, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ history.

The assumed coherency of history that Western historical thought considers as its focus of study is in fact, Lévi-Strauss suggests, the ‘coherency of myth’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966 [1962]: 245-69; 1984 [1964]: 12-3; White 1978: 103). History, seen from this perspective, is the equivalent of ‘myth with dates’ (Barnes 1971: 547). The coherency of myth is created when ‘basic story units (or clusters of events)’ are arranged into narratives in such a manner that an essentially human structure or process may appear as a natural inevitability’ (White 1978: 103). When a historian or anthropologist gives an account of ‘why something happened’, they make a claim to fact, which actually rests on a set of conventions for the construction of a plausible narrative. All such historical stories, then, take part in the mythical realm because they ‘cosmologise’ or ‘naturalise’ that which are nothing but human constructions; they could be other than how they are structured (White 1978: 103).

Historical narratives, as much as mythic narratives, then, constitute particular modes of experiencing time. Nancy Munn draws on the notion of temporalisation to describe the manifold way relations in time transpire. Actors are not only ‘in’ a particular time. They are simultaneously constructing that time and their own experience of that time in the kind of relations formed between themselves and a given set of temporal orientation points. Munn suggests this is a symbolic process that assumes multiple forms ‘all the time’, with time-reckoning being only one form of temporalisation. It entails both implicit knowing as well as explicit attention to the time element in the course of the projects performed by actors (1992: 104; cf. Fabian 1983: 74). More generally, the past-present-future relation is inherent in all forms of temporalisation. This is because ‘people operate in a present that is always infused and which they are further infusing with pasts and futures’ (Munn 1992: 115; Gell 1992: 238-9). Although we all live in one single time, how those past-present-future relations are represented in any social context can never be known, except through careful study.

For example, among the Cumbal Indians of Columbia, reference to a past action is made by saying adelante (‘forward’ in time or in space). Cumbales explain this usage by arguing that ‘although events occurred in the past, we live their consequences today and must act upon them now. For this reason, what already occurred is in front of the observer, because that is where it can be corrected’ (Rappaport 1988: 721). In a similar way, the New Zealand Maoris refer to the past as nga ra o mua, ‘the days in front’ and the future as kei muri, ‘behind’. The use of these terms is explained as follows: ‘They move into the future with their eyes on the past. In deciding how to act in the present, they examine the panorama of [the past] spread before their eyes, and select the model that is most appropriate …from the many presented there’. It would be mistaken to see the Maori living in the past. Rather, the past is drawn on for guidance—the past is brought into both present and future (Metge 1976: 70).

In referring to these representations of time as ‘history’, their distinctiveness is obscured, potentially reducing them to the Western concept of history, where the writing of history known as historicism defines how the past should be studied. Historicism insists that the past must be understood on its own terms (see Palmié 2013). For many Western people, it makes perfect sense to say ‘the past is dead, you cannot change the past’. It is because it is dead that the past can be an object of historical study (Dening 1991). In a similar fashion, the idea of the past as a ‘foreign country’ (Lowenthal 1985) also has resonance for many Westerners. In a literal way, the subject of history ‘invades’ that country, subjects its denizens to this discipline, and appropriates their countries to the present (see Fasolt 2004: xviii). But these ideas do not necessarily apply across societies.

Such a complaint was levelled against ethnohistory (see Krech 1991). As traditionally practiced, ethnohistory has meant the reconstruction of the history of a people that had in the past no written history. Others disagreed with this convention: ‘[E]thnohistory … must fundamentally consider the people’s own sense of how events are constituted, and their ways of culturally constructing the past’ (Gewertz & Schieffelin 1985: 3). Similar criticisms were levelled against the formal principles used for assessing the truth value of oral traditions (Vansina 1965) as if they were written archival documents (Rosaldo 1980a; cf. Rosaldo 1980b).

These critiques suggest radically questioning the nature of history and by implication that of historical time. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has advocated a shift away from two ontological assumptions that inform ‘secular conceptions of the political and the social’ (2008 [2000]: 15-6). One is that people exist in a ‘single and secular historical time’ that encompasses other sorts of time (cf. Bear 2014: 5-6). The second is that people are ontologically singular. Entities such as gods or spirits can be represented as ‘beliefs’ but cannot be ascribed any real agency in historical events (cf. Sahlins 2017). The problem is one of moving beyond Eurocentric histories and the naturalism of historical time associated with the idea that ‘everything can be historicised’ (Chakrabarty 2008 [2000]: 73, emphasis removed; cf. Hastrup 1992: 11).

Consider the Indian Santal rebellion of 1855. The leaders of the rebellion said they carried out their actions as ordered by their god Thakur. Such ideas can be acknowledged, but to attribute any actual agency to the god in the events that transpired would go against standard historical procedures for resolving debates about the past and the kinds of evidence that can be used (Chakrabarty 2008 [2000]: 104). A comparable example is found among the Kaluli people, Papua New Guinea who contend that, years ago but within living memory, forest animals emerged in large numbers to attack a Kaluli longhouse (Schieffelin 1985). It was a form of revenge. The cause of such an attack was disrespect shown to animals, an event known as sana mono (‘strike’ ‘eat’). Accounts from Kaluli people whose longhouses have been attacked in this way are described in detail and it is shown how the attacks have a reality based on Kaluli perceptions of such events (Schieffelin 1985: 44-5). However, Western historians would not accept the sana mono as a real event ‘because they do not accept the Kaluli epistemological framework which gives the events in question their “meaning”’ (Schieffelin 1985: 54). Echoing Chakrabarty’s analysis, sana mono highlights the limits of credibility in Western historical consciousness and ways of knowing (Schieffelin 1985: 54).

There is thus no third voice or perspective that can integrate the views of the Santal or Kaluli with that of Eurocentric history. Each has distinct ideas of causality and of the relations between past, present and future. How can this problem of analysis be resolved? Anthropologists and historians have been moving in the same direction in this regard (see Ballard 2014). The historian François Hartog (2015 [2003]) has proposed the notion of ‘regimes of historicity’ to solve this problem. These regimes are analytic constructs that refer to how individuals and groups situate themselves in time, and how they consider themselves to alter over time (cf. Trouillot 1995: 3-4).

As individuals always have degrees of separation and relations from their selves as well as others, it is through the categories of past, present, and future that order and meaning is provided to these forms of division and connection, enabling them to be understood and articulated (Hartog 2015 [2003]: xvi). For example, a Dinka man (in what is now South Sudan) had been imprisoned in Khartoum. In response to this past event, he called one of his children Khartoum in memory of that place and to exorcise the powerful agency that troubling place from the past could have over him in the present and future. This Dinka man’s historicity was bound up with Khartoum in a way not captured by viewing his past through the lens of history (Lienhardt 1961: 149). It is thus possible to recognise historicity separately from the advent of the modern concept of history and historicism.

The significance of historicity in this regard is that it does not assume that events or time exist as a line of occurrences that add together as ‘history’. Whereas orthodox ideas of history (associated with historicism) isolate the past, historicity emphases the multifaceted relationships of past, present, and future (see Hirsch & Stewart 2005; Fazioli 2017: 16). Thus, different peoples will have distinct ways of valuing and communicating these categories and their interconnections (see Argenti 2019). It is this that the analyst might designate as a ‘regime’ or, alternatively, historicity may be understood as part of a cosmology or worldview (Tonkin 1992: 68-70). In both cases, the issue is of one of how people make sense and represent their experiences of time.

For instance, what is especially novel in the New Testament is ‘the tension between the decisive “already fulfilled” and the “not yet completed” between present and future’ (Hartog 2015 [2003]: 61). It is upon this tension that a Christian order of time and cosmology was created as well as a Christian influenced history, being a history of salvation (Cullman 1967: 172). To nineteenth century evangelical missionaries in Africa, the Bible was of overriding central importance: ‘[i]t was their supreme paradigmatic history, through which they recognised new situations and even their own actions’ (Peel 1995: 595-6). The missionaries did not just see themselves, but that of the African ‘other’, in this cosmology and narratives of the Bible (cf. Trautmann 1995: 176). Subsequently, a worldview based on ideas of progress supplanted the ‘striving for salvation’ and appropriated ‘the latter’s forward focused tension combined with a “hopeful expectation” orientated toward the future’ (Löwith 1949: 47). The native who did not pursue such a ‘progressive’ temporal trajectory could appear as living in another time, as lacking ‘modernity’, and a proper grasp of history could be viewed as ‘history’s forgotten doubles’ (Nandy 1995). At the same time, it is evident that the contemporary is plural, radically plural, and diverse peoples live their lives according to distinct historicities that highlight the conceptual limits of conventional historical practice, historical time, and thus of historicism.

Conclusion

The professionalisation of anthropology occurred at the same time that historicism became established as the leading paradigm of historical practice. An inescapable fact of the world we inhabit is that everything, potentially, can be placed in a historical context (Nandy 1995: 45). This is the basis of the modern historical consciousness, whereby the past is no longer present and is thus an object of study. But this is only one way of understanding the past and its relation to the present and future. There are other ways of conceiving ‘history’ and historical consciousness (see Stewart 2012; Hodges 2015).

The dictum ‘that anthropology must choose between being history and being nothing’ is today widely accepted—at least insofar as certain contexts of study clearly require historical analysis to be understood. The reverse may also be true, namely that ‘history must choose between being … anthropology or being nothing’. Although the latter has to some extent occurred (e.g. see Hunt 1989), both anthropology and history can perhaps transcend the supremacy of historicism. This would be by revealing other ways of knowing the inextricable relations between past, present, and future, thereby eschewing the idea that everything can be historicised, and the explicit and implicit power structures that historicism sustains (see Chakrabarty 2008 [2000]; Fasolt 2004).

Note

Unlike other entries in this encyclopedia, this text is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license.

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Note on contributor

Eric Hirsch is Professor of Anthropology at Brunel University London. He has a long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Melanesia. He is the author most recently of Ancestral presence: cosmology and historical experience in the Papuan highlands (2021, Routledge) and co-editor of The Melanesian world (2019, Routledge).

Prof. Eric Hirsch, Anthropology, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK. Eric.hirsch@brunel.ac.uk

[1] Among numerous citations, the following are a selection from the past and more recent, some of which are referred to in the text below: Barnes 1971; Cohn 1987; Comaroff & Comaroff 1992; Evans-Pritchard 1962; Hastrup 1992; Radin 1933; Rivers 1922; Stocking 2001; Varisco 2015; White 1957; cf. Axel 2002: 33.

[2] Georg Iggers (1995) discusses the origins and complex of meanings attributed to the term over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[3] Matti Bunzl (1996) traces Boas’s cautious cultural historicism to the German anthropological tradition of Bastian and Ritter, through Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt and ultimately to the Herdian ideal of the Volksgeist.