Anthropology and classics: Epistemological divergences and encounters

Abstract

The paper deals with the relationship between two academic disciplines: anthropology and Classics that was changing through the time. Although the classical scholars that were oriented towards anthropology never represented dominant stream in the discipline that researched antiquity, we may follow the transformation of mentioned relation that reflects specific methodological positions and changes, as well as wider social and historical context that unavoidably had impact on the development and the status of the academic disciplines. The research attitude towards the Other (as the other culture or as own past) that developed in a specific way in colonialist nineteen century led gradually to disciplinary self-criticism and self-awareness of superior position of the researcher in anthropology that reflected the attitude towards own culture. Regarding the classics, I will point exactly to those researchers that had anthropological approach (even after this discipline abandoned diachrony), changing the dominant perspective from which the antiquity was perceived in order to free themselves from the position about the “cradle of European civilisation”. They started to pose new questions and changed the focus of their research, taking new perspectives for interpretation of fascinating ancient cultures. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177026: Kulturno nasleđe i identitet]

Keywords

• Frazer
• Cambridge Ritualists
• Louis Gernet
• French anthropological school of ancient worlds
• Vernant