Edward Evans-Pritchard

(1902-1973, Britain)

Edward Evans-Pritchard is known for his approach in analyzing non-western belief systems, especially those in Africa. He believed that anthropologists should analyze societies by considering the local people’s views and should not entirely rely on presupposed ideas about that society. In other words, an anthropologist needs to understand people’s behaviors and thoughts in their own context, which is based on their local reality. Evans-Pritchard studied seemingly alien norms in Africa and demonstrated that they make perfect sense from the local person’s point of view. His goal was to present ethnographies of indigenous beliefs in an accurate and coherent manner to those who do not belong to these indigenous societies.

One of the famous ethnographies by Evans-Pritchard is Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, an analysis on witchcraft within the Azande society of East Africa. The Azande often credit witchcraft when they meet misfortunes. For example, when a building suddenly collapses and people who happen to be under its roof are injured, they say this happening is due to witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard argued that this witchcraft explanation supplies a missing link. The Azande know these two facts: that the supports for the roof were undermined and that people were sitting under the roof in order to escape the glare of the sun. However, the Azande need an explanation that also connects these two events, and that explanation is witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard’s analysis shows that the Azande’s witchcraft explanation is rational according to their way of reasoning. Besides anthropological values, this ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has been a primary point of reference in philosophical arguments about rationality and relativism.

Since Evans-Pritchard valued contexts and meanings in cultures, he saw societies as moral systems rather than natural systems. He argued that anthropology should be modeled on humanities, especially history, rather than on science that searches for universal laws. He outlined three steps of anthropological analysis, each with direct parallels in historical methods. First, an anthropologist attempts to understand another society and translate it to his own. The only difference between anthropology and history is that the anthropologist’s data is produced from direct fieldwork while the historian relies on written record. Second, the anthropologist and historian use analysis to transform their raw data into sociological explanations of a society’s structure. Finally, the anthropologist compares the social structure that his analysis has revealed with that of other societies. Prior to Evans-Pritchard, Functionalists such as Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had eliminated historical methods from anthropology, in order to make the discipline scientific. However, Evans-Pritchard reintroduced historical thinking back into anthropology by valuing local logic and value systems in his cultural analysis.

Evans-Pritchard and his work have made a great impact on the study of African societies in particular and the study of non-western systems of thought in general. His approach, which forces an anthropologist to step into local people’s shoes, is regarded as necessary by those who study different societies and cultures.

Biography of Edward Evans-Pritchard

Sources:

Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1996 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.

Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

Salzman, Philip Carl. 2001 Understanding Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theory. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.

Winters, Christopher. 1991 International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing.

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Edward Evans-Pritchard

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