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No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries
ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2012, No. 1 (2), Anthropology / history of the Contemporary World

Misgav Har-Peled
Decolonising Western History. Political Sources of Historical Anthropology

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Keywords: Anthropological history, Anthropological turn, Anthropology, Decolonization, France, French Historiography, History, Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Claude Schmitt.

Abstract:
This paper examines the development of the name of the French historical current known as “anthropologie-hitorique” (Historical Anthropology). It is proposed that its founder, Jacques Le Goff, used the term anthropology rather than ethnology or ethno-history to name his historical approach due to political reasons, principally the willingness to take part in the process of decolonization. This process of decolonization involved writing the history of the colonized nations, or those nations “without history.” Hence, writing a historical anthropology of the West was seen as liberating the voice of forgotten, marginalized groups in European history, and part of the process of decolonization of the Social Sciences.

About Author:
MISGAV HAR-PELED - archaeologist, anthropologist, historian; research associate: Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas UNACH, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico and The French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ).
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