Stocking's Historiography of Influence

Abstract

This article is a critical assessment of George Stocking's historiography of influence and his genealogy of Boasian anthropology. Specifically, Stocking argues that Gamio and Redfield and the research projects and forms of anthropology associated with them were influenced by Boas and/or manifested and participated in, what his analyses constitute as, the Boasian school, tradition or paradigm. This contribution to the historiography of the field of anthropology has two objectives. First, the article provides a critique of the attribution of influence, in general, and of Boasian influence in relation to the anthropologies of Gamio and Redfield. Second, the article assesses Stocking's argument for the conceptual unity of the Boasian `tradition' and `paradigm', and suggests an alternative concept, that of disciplinary modality. The article concludes with a discussion of Lomnitz's assessment of the mutual interdependency yet studied blindness between the Mexican and Anglo traditions of North American anthropology.