The Problem of Anthropology in Historical Perspective: An Inquiry into the Growth of the Social Sciences

Abstract

In times of crisis there is an inevitable return to fundamentals. Questions such as the relation of knowledge to the world of experience are revived, often in a disharmonious way. That such a state of affairs obtains in anthropology can only be judged by the frequence which divergent views concerning the status of their discipline have occurred among modern anthropologists. Starting with isolated individual and intuitive insights and misgivings in the mid-sixties, the process gathered momentum and had reached near-rebellious proportions by the end of the sixties. Whereas earlier writers such as Hooker, Maquet, and Levi-Strauss I represented a critical liberal reevaluation within traditional anthropology, the later and younger writers such as Gough (generational difference notwithstanding), Goddard, Magubane, Moore, Faris, Stauder, Banaji and Talal Asad represent a leftist denunciation of colonial (not to say positivist) anthropology.2 While historical instances have largely coincided, the theoretical nuances of the same movement have varied from country to country. In America the rebellion has tended to be more ideological than theoretical.3 In Britain, despite a sharper generational gap than in America, the ideological aspect has been played down in favour of what is called academic discussion. In practice this has led