The Sociology of the Middle Ages

This course is intended to expand your theoretical toolkit by introducing you to some key themes and concepts in anthropology and sociology, and what they can contribute to our understanding of the middle ages. Today sociology and anthropology on the one hand and medieval history on the other seem highly incompatible methodologically (since as medievalists we don’t have the option of asking our subjects survey questions, or of going to live with them for a couple of years). But there is in fact a very long history of fruitful mutual cross-pollination between our disciplines at the level of concepts – even, at times, a kind of co-dependency. At the most basic level, we all share a concern with the performance of status, with social position and relationships, and with the manipulation and interpretation of symbols. Some of the most ground-breaking studies of the middle ages have been made using anthropological and sociological frameworks.

The course will explore issues central to social and political relations, such as: what makes good gossip? What makes a good gift? Who decides if a ritual went well or not? Behind these more specific questions lie much more general ones, such as: what makes people think well or badly of someone else, and why are some people listened to but not others? How is it decided who will be at the top of a hierarchy and who at the bottom, and what tools do people use to reproduce such hierarchies? Why are social norms and rules of behaviour so mysterious and so difficult to master, and what makes some people better at them than others? By asking these same fundamental questions both in the past and the present, this course will exploit the power of both medieval history and the social sciences to make our own world suddenly look strange and unfamiliar.