Leroi-Gourhan and the Field of Ethnology

• Published in: Paragraph
• Main Author: Johnson, Christopher
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2020
• Subjects: Literature and Literary Theory; Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0318; https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full-xml/10.3366/para.2020.0318

The work of French ethnologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–86) represents an important episode in twentieth-century intellectual history. This essay follows the development of Leroi-Gourhan's relationship to the discipline of ethnology from his early work on Arctic Circle cultures to his post-war texts on the place of ethnology in the human sciences. It shows how in the pre-war period there is already a conscious attempt to articulate a more comprehensive form of ethnology including the facts of natural environment and material culture. The essay also indicates the biographical importance of Leroi-Gourhan's mission to Japan as a decisive and formative experience of ethnographic fieldwork, combining the learning of a language with extended immersion in a distinctive material and mental culture. Finally, it explores how in the post-war period Leroi-Gourhan's more explicit meta-commentaries on the scope of ethnology argue for an extension of the discipline's more traditional domains of study to include the relatively neglected areas of language, technology and aesthetics.