Maurice Bloch
Maurice Bloch | |
---|---|
Born | |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | London School of Economics Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Anthropology |
Institutions | London School of Economics |
Part of a series on |
Medical and psychological anthropology |
---|
Social and cultural anthropology |
Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939)[1] is a British anthropologist. He is famous for his fieldwork on the shift of agriculturalists in Madagascar, Japan and other parts of the world, and has also contributed important neo-Marxian work on power, history, kinship, and ritual.
Early life and education
Maurice Bloch was born in Caen, Calvados, to Jewish parents Claudette (née Raphael), a marine biologist, and Pierre Bloch, an engineer. His grandmother was a niece of sociologist
He studied as an undergraduate at the
Career
His subsequent career has been almost entirely at the LSE, where he was appointed a full professor in 1983.
In 2005 Bloch was appointed European Professor at the
He has supervised many younger anthropologists, several of whom hold prestigious posts in the UK, US, Australia, Japan, France, Canada, the Netherlands, China, Argentina, Madagascar and Malaysia. His writings have been translated into at least twelve languages.
In 1990, Bloch was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.[6]
Research
Bloch's field research has been mainly carried out in two different areas of
He has been an innovator in relating social anthropology to linguistics and cognitive psychology.[7] Much of his theoretical work since the 1970s has concerned the interface between cognition and social and cultural life. What he has written on this subject faces two ways: on the one hand, he criticises anthropologists for exaggerating the particularity of specific cultures; on the other hand, he criticises cognitive scientists for underestimating it.
He has published more than a hundred articles and many books,[8] half of which concern Madagascar in some way.
See also
Publications
His books include:
- 1971 Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar, London: Seminar Press (Extracts translated into Malagasy).
- 1975 Political Language, Oratory and Traditional Society, (ed.) London: Academic Press.
- 1975 Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology (ed.), A.S.A. Studies. London: Malaby Press.
- 1982 Death and the Regeneration of Life (ed. with J. Parry), Cambridge: CUP.
- 1983 Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship, Oxford: Clarendon.
- 1986 From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar, Cambridge: CUP.
- 1989 Money and the Morality of Exchange (ed. with J. Parry) Cambridge: CUP.
- 1992 Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience, Cambridge: CUP
- 1998 How We Think They Think: Anthropological Studies in Cognition, Memory and Literacy. Boulder: Westview Press.
- 2005 Essays in the Transmission of Culture. Berg: London.
- 2012 Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge: CUP.
- 2013 In and Out of Each Other's Bodies: Theories of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social. Boulder: Paradigm.
Interviews
- "Interview of Maurice Bloch": Maurice Bloch interviewed by Alan Macfarlane on 29 May 2008
- "The Reluctant Anthropologist": Eurozine interview of Maurice Bloch by Maarja Kaaristo on 29 July 2007
References
- ^ a b "BLOCH, Prof. Maurice Émile Félix". Who's Who. Vol. 2022 (online ed.). A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ "Interview of Maurice Bloch": Maurice Bloch interviewed by Alan Macfarlane on 29 May 2008
- ^ "The reluctant anthropologist - Maurice Bloch, Maarja Kaaristo An interview with Maurice Bloch". Eurozine. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- ^ Optima: Fitzwilliam College Newsletter, Issue 21, Summer 2015 (p. 2)
- ^ "Maurice Bloch" Archived 17 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Fellows of the British Academy - British Academy". Archived from the original on 6 June 2011. Retrieved 4 August 2010.
- ^ "lecture". Alanmacfarlane.com. 29 May 2008. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
- ^ "Maurice Bloch: Books, Biogs, Audiobooks, Discussions". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
External links
- Maurice Bloch’s webpage at the LSE
- Some of Maurice Bloch's publications are available via LSE Research Online: