Eric Wolf- Cultural Anthropologist
Background Information
- Eric Wolf was born on February 1st 1923 and died on March 6th 1999
- He was a Cultural Anthropologist with many achievements over his life time
- He was born in Vienna, Austria to a Jewish Family
- They moved to England then the United States to escape the Nazi's, this is where he learned how to speak English
- He was interned in an alien detention camp in Huyton, England
- Studied Latin American throughout his life
Work in Society
- He was partially known for his study of peasants
- Found that peasant communities form an integral part of larger complex societies
- He says it is important to a society in historical context as well as within a larger community
- He thinks the purpose of Anthropology is to explain the world
Marxism
Societal Views
- Wolf has shown his public support of Marxism, this is a world view/method of societal analysis that focus on class relations and societal conflict that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation
- Largely contributed to the Marxist thought
- 2 branches of Marxism: Systems Marxism and Promethean Marxism
- He takes a strong stance against functionalism
- This views society as a bounded system of ordered relations and a structured entity
- He views society heterogeneous; diverse in character or context
- Simply he says it is a bunch of different things mixing together
Symbolizes optimism for freedom from economic and political mistreatment for a more desirable future
Discipline of assuming the existence/ truth of something that could be used to frame general laws or patterns of social development
Disciplinary Imperialism
- Wolf came up with the idea of disciplinary imperialism
- This idea states that cultural anthropology is different than social anthropology, which is also different then sociology, and history in the American and Americanized global academic community
Power
- Much of Wolf's work deals with issues of power
- He proposes a redefinition of culture that emphasizes power and diversity, ambiguity, contradiction, and imperfectly shared meaning of knowledge