Rockefeller Philanthropy: And the Rise of Social Anthropology

Abstract

Donald Fisher studied sociology at the University of Birmingham and has a doctorate in sociology of education from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an Associate Professor teaching Sociology in the Department of Social and Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. While there is disagreement about the precise date when Social Anthropology became the dominant anthropological perspective in Britain, all agree that it happened during the interwar period. Kupei' settles on 1924 when Malinowski took up the appointment as Reader in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). Beattie? locates the triumph around 1930, while Boissevain3 prefers the mid-1930s. Kuklick4 fluctuates between the late 1920s by which time Malinowski had defeated the Diffusionist dogma, and 1937 when Radcliffe-Brown took up the Chair in Anthropology at Oxford. All agree that the two leaders of the School were Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. Further, the progress of these two men and their students in Britain, Africa, and Australia provides convincing evidence for Marvin Harris's conclusion that 'By the late 1930s this group [social anthropologists] had gained virtually unchallenged control of the anthropological establishment throughout the British Empire. Social anthropologists were in control of the discipline. Their use of synchronic functionalist and structural functionalist frameworks tied to lengthy periods of intense participant observation in the field had become the domain assumptions of the discipline. British Social Anthropology had become 'normal science'. Yet we do not have an adequate understanding of what can only be described as a drastic and important shift. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have focussed primarily upon the content of the ideas, and the extent to which the new perspective was regarded as intellectually superior.6 More often than not, the focus of explanation has been on the linkage at both the intellectual and ideological levels of functionalism and colonialism. Analysts have pointed to the correspondence between the aims of colonial administrators in the British Empire, and the assumptions underlying Functional theory; the internal logic of the discipline that was pressing for a new conceptualization and new methodological approaches; the agreement among anthropologists and administrators about the need to bring science and practice together; the intradiscipline conflicts between aspiring leaders in the discipline; and not least, the sociohistorical setting which included all the social and economic uncertainties as well as the changing political and economic relations between the colonists and the colonized.7 I suggest that the wealth of information still fails to explain the underlying causes for the rise of Social Anthropology. The intent here is to help fill in these gaps. The focus is upon the relation between Rockefeller philanthropy and Social Anthropology during the interwar period. Rockefeller funding certainly did more than any other funding source to facilitate the new Social Anthropology. The decisions to provide this support emerged from the complex negotiations between Foundation officials and the Social Anthropologists.