How We Think They Think

How We Think They Think focuses on issues of cognition, memory, and literacy as they relate to anthropology. It deals in different ways with what is a central concern: the relation between what is explicit and conscious and what is inexplicit or unconscious, but perhaps more fundamental.

Maurice E.F. Bloch is professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Part 1 Introduction -- Cognition -- Language, Anthropology and Cognitive Science -- What Goes Without Saying: The Conceptualization of Zafimaniry Society -- Cognition and Ethnography -- Domain-Specificity, Living Kinds and Symbolism -- Part 2 Memory -- Internal and External Memory: Different Ways of Being in History -- The Resurrection of the House Amongst the Zafimaniry of Madagascar -- Time, Narratives and the Multiplicity of Representations of the Past -- Autobiographical Memory and the Historical Memory of the More Distant Past -- Part 3 Literacy -- Astrology and Writing in Madagascar -- Literacy and Enlightenment -- The Uses of Schooling and Literacy in a Zafimaniry Village 1 -- Why do Malagasy Cows Speak French?