Robert Launay
Northwestern University, Anthropology, Faculty Member
- Anthropology, Anthropology of Islam, African Studies, History of Anthropology, Mande, West Africa, and 9 moreCote D'Ivoire, Sir John Mandeville, History of Islam in Africa, Islam in Africa, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, History of Economic Thought, Islamic Art, Political Economy, and Victorian Women Writersedit
The emergence of the notions of "modern" and of "European" was implicitly comparative, opposing "moderns" to "ancients", Europeans to non-Europeans. As these notions were formulated in the course of what we now call "early modern... more
The emergence of the notions of "modern" and of "European" was implicitly comparative, opposing "moderns" to "ancients", Europeans to non-Europeans. As these notions were formulated in the course of what we now call "early modern Europe", roughly from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the relationship of"savages" "Orientals" and "ancients" to contemporary Europeans and to one another was not fixed by any means, and was not embedded in an imaginary time line that asserted European superiority.
Research Interests: European History, History of Ideas, Renaissance Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Québec History, and 15 moreHistory of Anthropology, Enlightenment, Jesuit history, Montaigne, Johann Gottfried Herder, Jean Jaques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Orientalism, Voltaire, Sir John Mandeville, DIDEROT, Adam Ferguson, Jesuits in China, Jean Bodin, and Edward Gibbon
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Research Interests: Anthropology and Art
Research Interests: History and Encyclopedia
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I have taught the history of anthropology since 1978. At the beginning and the end of my career, I have had to cope with the same question: why should students have to study the history of the discipline? The rationale underlying such a... more
I have taught the history of anthropology since 1978. At the beginning and the end of my career, I have had to cope with the same question: why should students have to study the history of the discipline? The rationale underlying such a question has shifted radically, though. The 1980s were the heyday of positivism, the conviction that social “sciences” like anthropology should actually be scientific, Now that “decolonizing anthropology” has become a fashionable enterprise, students want to know why they are being asked to read the writings of dead, straight, white European males.The shifting focus of anthropology reflects changes, not only in anthropological theory but also in the world at large. Our understandings are bound to shift, for better or worse. But the forms of amnesia that some contemporary scholars seem to abdicate erase, not only the history of the discipline, but also the history of the colonized peoples in whose name we perform such an erasure. f dead, straight, white European males.The shifting focus of anthropology reflects changes, not only in anthropological theory but also in the world at large.
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The debate over abortion in the United States hinges on the concept of personhood. Is a foetus a person? This short op ed uses examples from African religions to suggest that personhood is a religious concept, with different possible... more
The debate over abortion in the United States hinges on the concept of personhood. Is a foetus a person? This short op ed uses examples from African religions to suggest that personhood is a religious concept, with different possible anwers with important implications.
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Emile Durkheim began The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life with an injunction: “In order to identify the simplest and most primitive religion that observation can make known to us, we must first define what is properly understood as... more
Emile Durkheim began The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life with an injunction: “In order to identify the simplest and most primitive religion that observation can make known to us, we must first define what is properly understood as a religion”. Almost simultaneously, Max Weber would begin the long section on the sociology of religion in his unfinished work Economy and Society by insisting, “To define ‘religion’, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study” (1978, p. 399). Durkheim’s insistence and Weber’s reticence are equally surprising. By and large, Durkheim’s writings are relatively sparing of definitions. He did not generally bother to define words that were already in common currency. “Religion” is unquestionably the most notable counterexample. On the other hand, Weber was far more scrupulous—one might even say obsessive—about defining terms that were not spec...
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List of figures, maps and tables Preface 1. Introduction: the people and the problem Part I. The Legacy of the Past: 2. Dyula and Senufo 3. Warriors, scholars and traders 4. Clansmen and kinsmen 5. The mechanics of marriage Part II.... more
List of figures, maps and tables Preface 1. Introduction: the people and the problem Part I. The Legacy of the Past: 2. Dyula and Senufo 3. Warriors, scholars and traders 4. Clansmen and kinsmen 5. The mechanics of marriage Part II. Responses to Change: 6. The seeds of change 7. Occupation, migration and education 8. Being Dyula in the twentieth century 9. Dyula Islam: the new orthodoxy 10. Kinship in a changing world 11. Conclusions: Heraclitus' paradox Notes Bibliography Index.
The centenary of Claude Lévi-Strauss' birth, and his death shortly afterwards, have generated a spurt of publications ranging from biographies to collections of essays to unpublished works. Some of these works dwell on his worldview,... more
The centenary of Claude Lévi-Strauss' birth, and his death shortly afterwards, have generated a spurt of publications ranging from biographies to collections of essays to unpublished works. Some of these works dwell on his worldview, his preoccupations with globalization, overpopulation, and the environment, albeit in ways that reflect the poverty of his sociological analysis. Reappraisals of his structural approaches to the study of kinship, myth, and aesthetics are more relevant to contemporary approaches in anthropology, especially those that stress his paradoxical wedding of primary sensuous experience to abstract patterns of thought.
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The formal discipline of anthropology emerged out of centuries of European reflection of the nature of non-Europeans, but the foundations of this field of study were laid long before. Foundations of Anthropological Theory presents a... more
The formal discipline of anthropology emerged out of centuries of European reflection of the nature of non-Europeans, but the foundations of this field of study were laid long before. Foundations of Anthropological Theory presents a selection of key texts that reflect the broad scope of ...
Sabati-Ba's Coup d'Etat: Contexts of Legitimacy in a West African Chiefdom Robert Launay The last decade of the nineteenth century was a turbulent period in the his-tory of north-central Ivory Coast. No fewer than three rival... more
Sabati-Ba's Coup d'Etat: Contexts of Legitimacy in a West African Chiefdom Robert Launay The last decade of the nineteenth century was a turbulent period in the his-tory of north-central Ivory Coast. No fewer than three rival armies from out-side were vying for control over the ...
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An ethnographic-cum-historical overview of the interface between Islam and ethnicity in Cote d'Ivoire
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This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
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Ware’s impassioned condemnation of the idea of Islam noir is a reaction to its unfortunate consequences for the scholarly study of Africa and of Islam: the marginalization of Islam in the study of Africa and of Africa in the study of... more
Ware’s impassioned condemnation of the idea of Islam noir is a reaction to its unfortunate consequences for the scholarly study of Africa and of Islam: the marginalization of Islam in the study of Africa and of Africa in the study of Islam. On the other hand, if we attempt to historicize the emergence of the paradigm of Islam noir in terms of European attitudes toward Africa and toward Islam in the early twentieth century, we can reach a more nuanced appreciation of the ambivalences in European racial (though perhaps not always unequivocally racist) thinking. Early twentieth-century French attitudes toward Africa and blackness were by no means univocally negative, although they also relied on racial dichotomization. The French avant-garde, and even the general public, celebrated blackness in the fields of art, music, and dance, while anthropologists were engaged in the quest for “authentic” African cosmologies. The Negritude movement among francophone African intellectuals incorporated the very dichotomies that had earlier informed the elaboration of the paradigm of Islam noir. The British, by way of contrast, did not elaborate a concept of Islam noir, and the comparison with the French case is instructive.
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Panel Abstract Islamic religious infrastructure has had – and continues to have – great importance for processes of socialization and the production and maintenance of Muslim identities in Africa. Changes during the post-colonial period... more
Panel Abstract Islamic religious infrastructure has had – and continues to have – great importance for processes of socialization and the production and maintenance of Muslim identities in Africa. Changes during the post-colonial period have, however, affected Muslim institutions, causing structural rearrangements and new modalities to emerge. Much of this is produced by intra-religious discourses, but is also related to broader socio-political developments. This panel will investigate such changes, discussing a range of different Muslim institutions across the African continent. Hadiza K. Abdulrahman will explore changes in the mode of Islamic education in Nigeria, pointing to how different voices are engaged in debates about the meaning of education for the construction of contemporary religious identity. S. A. Chembea examines the emerging problems related to the management of waqf properties in a Kenyan context, focusing on the relationship between local Muslim communities and the state – and how a more active state has created tensions among local Muslims. Frédérick Madore similarly addresses the question of the role of the state as a religious actor – relating this to the organization of hajj in contemporary Ivory Coast. His paper demonstrates how uneven state-policies have augmented intra-religious discussions about the hajj – and how those discussions intersect with competition over economic and religious resources. Jep Stockmans examines the growth of mosques in Addis Ababa, pointing to how this has intensified intra-religious tensions. His paper focuses on religious infrastructure in a concrete and physical manner, relating this to the question of religion and materiality in general, and to local religious actors' perceptions of the other's physical presence in particular. Paper Abstracts Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman Contested Representations of Northern Nigeria's Qur'anic Schools and Almajirai Almajiranci, Islamic-based system of education in Northern Nigeria, involves boys as young as seven being sent off to study and memorize the Qur'an under the tutelage of a Malam. It is currently a topic of great debate in Nigerian society as researchers and the media have linked Almajiranci and Almajirai to everything from religious uprisings to Boko Haram and political unrests. Early indications from my phenomenological study of the products of Almajiranci have shown that the narratives employed above are contradictory to the narratives that the past Almajirai create and utilize for themselves. The critical and negative representations of Almajiranci are at odds with the ones they have of themselves. There is therefore a tension