Download A History of Anthropology: Chapter 3 – Four Founding Fathers

A History of Anthropology: Chapter 3 – Four Founding Fathers
Introduction:
End 19th century:
Begin 20th century:
WW I:
→
→
→
cultural globalisation, cultural imperialism, colonialism → evolutionist
theories give a legitimation for ‘superior western culture’
Authoritarian, conformist, evolutionist
Modernity/modernism: ambivalent view on truth, morality and progress
More liberal and tolerant thought (cfr. 18th century - Enlightenment)
4 founding fathers [in what follows ‘4ff’] of anthropology:
Franz BOAS (USA)
Bronislaw MALINOWSKI (Britain)
Alfred RADCLIFFE-BROWN (Britain)
Marcel MAUSS (France)
caused modern, largely non-evolutionist revolution in respectively
American, British and French anthropological thinking. German
tradition remains: diffusionism
4ff no shared programme, significant methodological & theoretical
differences
evolutionism had failed, but evolutionists (Morgan, Tylor) established
basic parameters of anthropological discipline
Boas and historical particularism:
 Influence from German diffusionism (critical to evolutionism)
 Development of theory = sufficient empirical grounding → collect and systematize
detailed data on particular cultures → theoretical generalisations (but with great care)
 Four-field-approach: linguistics, physical anthropology, archaeology, cultural
anthropology
(↔ France, Britain: not specialized, but generalistic approach)
 Field work: Inuit, Kwakiutl, NW coast of America, short, repeated visits, teamwork
 CULTURAL anthropology (USA): culture = everything mankind has created,
including society (material phenomena, social conditions, symbolic meaning) – (cfr.
definition Tylor)
(↔ Britain: SOCIAL anthropology: sociologically (social structure, norms, statuses,
social interactions) & comparative)
 HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM: historical reconstruction, every culture its own
values & unique history (like Bastian) (NOT evolutionist), intrinsic value of plurality
of cultural practices (NOT only function ↔ Britain)
 CULTURAL RELATIVISM: methodically & morally
 METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM: unique circumstances generate particular
cultures → cautious in generalisation, comparison (artificial similarities) → particular
example rather than general scheme
 Influence on American anthropology: Lowie, Sapir, Benedict, Mead …
Malinowski and the Trobriand islanders:
 Originally: psychology & economics, Seligman (London School of Economics)
 Society = understand holistically, unity of intertwined parts, analysis = synchronous
(NOT historical ↔ Boas)
 Field work: New Guinea, Trobriand Islands, participant observation
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PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION: did not invent ‘field work’, but new fieldwork
method = live with, participate in activities – no fact too trivial to record (detail) –
NOT wider historical, regional approach (↔ Mauss, Boas)
Work: ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ → ‘Kula-trade’ connected with other
institutions as politic leadership, domestic economics, kinship, rank → holistic,
intertwined
Cultures = NOT primitive or simple, but complex & multifaceted, just ‘different’ →
NOT single trait comparison, but holistic, context & interconnections
FUNCTIONALISM: “All social practices and institutions were functional in the
sense that they fit together in a functioning whole, which they contributed to
maintaining. But unlike the other functionalists who followed Durkheim, Malinowski
saw individuals, not society, as the system’s ultimate goal. Institutions existed for
people, not vice versa, and it was their [individual] needs, ultimately their biological
needs, that was the prime motor of social stability and change.”
→ individual biological needs → functional social practices and institutions to
satisfy those needs → practices and institutions in holistic system = society
= also METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM (↔ collectivist Durkheimians)
Similarity to Boas: methodological individualism, Germanic influence, scepticism
towards high-flying and generalising theories, anti-evolutionary
Difference with Boas: no historical reconstruction
Similarity to Radcliffe-Brown: anti-evolutionary, anti-historical
Difference with Radcliffe-Brown: no big theories, individualist (↔ collectivist,
society structure = structural functionalism)
Influence on Evans-Pritchard, Fortes, Firth, Richards, Leach, Schapera
Radcliffe-Brown’s natural science of society:
 Influence from Durkheim
 Field work: Andaman islands
 Work: ‘Andaman Islanders’
 Durkheimian ethnography: individual as product of society, collectivism – finding
abstract structural principles and socially integrating mechanisms → social cohesion
NOT culture (= what people think, do and believe), but society structure (= forces
that hold everything together)
 Scientific approach: “Society is bound together by a structure of juridical rules,
social statuses and moral norms, which circumscribe and regulate behaviour. Social
structure exists independently of the individual actors who reproduce it. Actual
persons and their relationships are mere instantiations of the structure, and the ultimate
goal of the anthropologist is to discover its governing principles, beneath the veneer
of empirically existing situations.”
 STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM: social structure (see above) exists (=cause) of
subsystems (=institutions) which contribute to the maintenance of the social
structure (=function) – cause of institutions = function of institutions
(tautology/backward reasoning)
e.g.: KINSHIP = key institution to maintain social structure (for Radcliffe-Brown)
 Anti-historical, institutions are functional today (= Malinowksi)
 Influence on Evans-Pritchard, Fortes (after influence Malinowski)
British anthropology:
2 lineages:
Functionalism
Malinowski
Functional institutions
Individual (needs)
Holistic
Anti-historical
London School of Economics
Participant observation
empirical ethnographic detail!!!
Structural functionalism
Radcliffe-Brown
Scientific, determining structure
Collective (society)
Holistic
Anti-historical
Oxford
Kinshipology!!!
Maus and the search for total social phenomena:
 Influence from Durkheim (Mauss’ uncle), (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Boas)
 Durkheimian: holistic, social organism, integrated whole
 3 levels of anthropology:
ETHNOGRAPHY: detailed study of customs, beliefs, social life
ETHNOLOGY: empirically based craft of regional comparison
ANTHROPOLOGY: philosophically informed theoretical endeavour to generalise
about humanity and society (based on ethnography & ethnology)
 Field work: no field work, but stress on methodology
 Classify societies & discover structural features common to different societal types
General understanding of social life (↔ Boas’ particularism)
Historical (↔ British anti-historicalism)
 Work: ‘The Gift’ → gift/countergift = total prestations which embody range of
relationships and express very essence of society (and evoke/need a whole range of
institutions: kinship, religion, economy …)
 Influence on French anthropology (Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Van Gennep, Lévy-Bruhl),
Anglo-American anthropology (Evans-Pritchard)
Anthropology in 1930: parallels and divergences:
 By 1930:
diffusionism & speculative armchair anthropology still flourishing
(Frazer) – emergence of ‘new anthropologists’ in national traditions (USA, Britain,
France) – start ‘modern anthropology’
 Many similarities:
o Detailed study of customs in relation to total culture (no isolation of cultural
traits)
o Holistic science (study culture/society in context)
o Society is system
 Many differences:
o Methods, theory, institutional organisation
o Cultural history & synchronic studies (Boas, Mauss – Diffusionism / NOT
Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown – ‘unscientific’ – only synchronic)
o Large, comparative sociological project (Radcliffe-Brown, Mauss) ↔ less
sociological, comparative science (Boas) / no comparison at all (Malinowski)
→ French Durkheimian influence on former 2 - German diffusionist influence
on latter 2
o Methodological collectivism (R-B, Mauss) ↔ Particularism/individualism
(Malinowski, Boas)
o Critiques: Boas: distrust of generalisation – Malinowski: too much detail –
Radcliffe-Brown: too coherent, incompatible with facts