Public lecture held at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale on Monday, 11.07.05 at 16.15h

Speaker: Karsten Kumoll, Institut für Soziologie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Abstract: Within some branches of sociological theory, the “social” seems to have been redefined as the “cultural” during the last decades. Furthermore, within historical studies concepts like “the new cultural history” and “historical anthropology” have become increasingly influential since the 1980s. One important source of this “cultural turn” within sociology and history is American cultural anthropology. However, within anthropology itself cultural theories, in particular “classical” concepts developed by Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins, have been seriously questioned from a rather postmodern perspective and from the perspective of British social anthropology. These critiques have been useful in directing the scholarly attention to some weaknesses of the culture concept. Do these critiques imply, however, that we should do social research “beyond the cultural turn” without “classical” anthropological theories of culture or even without the concept of “culture” itself? In reconsidering the so-called “Sahlins-Obeyesekere-debate” about the death of James Cook at Hawaii 1779 I will address this question. In discussing methodological, epistemological and conceptual key issues of this debate, I will argue that any study at the intersection of history and anthropology investigating colonial worlds has to face the conceptual key issues of the Sahlins-Obeyesekere-debate. These key issues are deeply intertwined with the concept of culture. While some of the critiques against the culture concepts are justifiable and indeed fruitful, abandoning the anthropological concept of culture does not solve the conceptual problems surrounding the death of James Cook at Hawai’i 1779. I will argue that a non-relativistic theory of culture incorporating new sociological accounts of structure and social action will be most fruitful in this respect.

Location: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Main Seminar Room Advokatenweg 36 06114 Halle/Saale

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