How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches To Cognition, Memory, And Literacy

by Maurice E.F. Bloch

These essays by one of anthropology’s most original theorists consider such fundamental questions as: Is cognition language-based? How reliable a guide to memory are people’s narratives about themselves? What connects the “social recalling” studied by anthropologists to the “autobiographical memory” studied by psychologists? Now gathered in accessible form for the first time and drawing frequently upon the author’s fieldwork among the Zafimaniry of Madagascar for ethnographic examples, the twelve closely linked essays of How We Think They Think pose provocative challenges not only to conventional cognitive models but to the basic assumptions that underlie much of ethnography. This book will be read with interest by those who study culture and cognition, ethnographic theory and practice, and the peoples and cultures of Africa.

Genres: Anthropology

216 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 1998

Reviews

[Mie]

It's very confusing although he does have a point in there somewhere

[Ghm]

I read selectively from this book, But in 2021 this text reads works as a historical document of where anthropology and psych. anthropology stood in the later 80's/ early 90's in regards to verbal/ interview data. But it is responding to an older, outdated, anthropological model and understanding that very few people practice anymore (e.g the importance of kinship studies). It's claims/criticisms of postmodernism are in direct conflict with other critiques of postmodernism. This book is not useless, but it is outdated. It is however, easy to read, and understand. Bloch is able to clearly state his relationship to the field of anthropology and doesn't make you wonder who he is, or where is alliances lie.

[Lily Bronski]

I really wanted to like this more than I did, but the it was just extremely basic cognitive psychology juxtaposed with the same very brief, boring, and somewhat tertiarily related ethnographic anecdotes. Many of the points he made were not wrong but had also been made many times before (e.g. explicit vs implicit knowledge). Maybe if you know truly nothing about cognitive science, but I think one would get a lot more from reading a book that was actually about that. I haven't read much cognitive anthropology and this is not convincing me that I should. The literacy section was genuinely interesting ethnographically, though.

[Alan Castellanos]

Excelente libro para poder problematizar la memoria, la narración, el presente y el pasado. Hace una excelente crítica hacia las fuentes orales. Es útil porque da nuesvas perspectivas para la crítica de fuentes orales y de cómo estas explican ciertas cosas que vienen implícitas en ellas.

Por otro lado, si uno quiere conocer más sobre los Zimarinys de Madagascar, es una buena fuente de información.

Totalmente recomendable.

[Jay Cowsill]

Bloch insists that many of the assumptions that underlie the ethnographic work of western anthropolgists are no more than folk psychology. He argues that anthropologists would benefit from a better understanding of the current trends in cognitive psychology that indicate that much thinking (and, consequently, what counts for knowledge) is non-verbal. Such understanding would guard against over-reliance on the verbal representations of a society's members in attempting to understand their everyday cultural experience, much of which is never never encoded in language. An interesting book that would have been better had the publisher arrangement for proofreading.