Fifty Key Anthropologists

Robert Gordon, Harriet Lyons, Andrew Lyons, Robert J. Gordon, Harriet Lyons, Andrew Lyons, Robert Gordon, Robert J. Gordon, Harriet Lyons, Andrew Lyons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136880117
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Fifty Key Anthropologists surveys the life and work of some of the most influential figures in anthropology. The entries, written by an international range of expert contributors, represent the diversity of thought within the subject, incorporating both classic theorists and more recent anthropological thinkers. Names discussed include:

• Clifford Geertz
• Bronislaw Malinowski
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Sherry B. Ortner
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Rodney Needham
• Mary Douglas
• Marcel Mauss

This accessible A-Z guide contains helpful cross-referencing, a timeline of key dates and schools of thought, and suggestions for further reading. It will be of interest to students of anthropology and related subjects wanting a succinct overview of the ideas and impact of key anthropologists who have helped to shape the discipline.

APPENDIX 1
Some key anthropological terms

The COMPARATIVE METHOD which involved the listing of parallel and similar customs, folklore, ritual practices, and marriage institutions in different societies throughout the world was employed by social evolutionists such as Tylor and Morgan in the late nineteenth century in order to sustain theories of the independent, parallel evolution of culture in different parts of the world. It assumed that similar practices, for example burying the dead with their possessions, wearing masks in rituals, reflected similar ideas (‘psychic unity of mankind’). Franz Boas, a historical particularist, was sceptical about such theories because they took for granted what had to be proven, and preferred instead to look for proven historical connections over shorter distances. Structural-functionalists and French structuralists also used a version of the comparative method in their search for synchronic laws or regularities in human action and thought. In the last thirty years, the theoretical pendulum seems to have swung back to particularism, a trend exemplified by some of the later writings of Clifford Geertz and the work of anthropological postmodernists.

CONFLICT THEORY refers to positions in anthropological theory which view conflict rather than equilibrium or consensus as the fundamental reality of social life. Such views were often influenced by Karl Marx’s idea that the struggle over access to economic resources was the driving force of history. Within social anthropology the Manchester school of structural-functionalists (such as Gluckman and early Turner) adopted this general position to suit specific ethnographic realities, mainly in Africa. They were particularly interested in mechanisms for resolving or containing conflict. Since the 1970s the most important advocates of conflict theory within anthropology have been critics of capitalism such as Eric Wolf and his disciples who have written about power relations in European, colonial, and postcolonial history. This is the contemporary Marxist position known as anthropological political economy.

CULTURAL MATERIALISM is a body of theory and a research strategy associated with Marvin Harris and with the early work of Royf (particularly the ecological variety developed by Julian Steward), functionalism and Darwinism. It is materialist inasmuch as it rejects explanations of customs that are based on beliefs, ideas, and doctrines inside the heads of anthropologists or their informants, and favors explanations based on the fulfilment of survival needs. Accordingly, Harris explained the so-called ‘sacred cow’ complex in India by noting that it was economical to allow cows to live out their natural lives, because oxen were valuable beasts of burden, because the dung was used for fuel, because milk and cheese were important nutrients, and cows (unlike pigs) primarily consumed grasses that humans couldn’t eat. For these reasons vegetarianism and avoidance of meat on the part of higher castes persisted. Indigenous Hindu explanations for such customs were discounted.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM is the idea that each culture is characterized by its own worldview and practices, and that customs that might seem absurd or wrong to Westerners at first glance make sense within the terms of that worldview. Relativists such as Boas and Herskovits condemned the ethnocentrism of evolutionism. Cultural relativism does not necessarily imply full-scale ethical relativism: to understand why some groups justify human sacrifice doesn’t mean you are endorsing the practice. In short many argue that cultural relativism calls for the researcher to suspend judgment while studying the phenomenon at hand.

CULTURE AND PERSONALITY was the tradition of psychological anthropology that was begun by Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, and Margaret Mead. It assumed that cultures differed in the type of personality they favored, and that cultural differences were perpetuated by the socialization process. One culture (e.g. Zuni) might favor peacefulness and discourage aggression; another might favor frenetic activity and encourage aggression (e.g. Kwakiutl).

DIACHRONIC VERSUS SYNCHRONIC a diachronic analysis or explanation is evolutionary or historical (the Greek roots mean ‘through time’), for example how state societies originated, or when the peoples of the North American Plains were introduced to the Arabic horse and how this development affected their cultures. A synchronic analysis or explanation concentrates on one particular point in time – you can analyze how a custom such as compulsory mother-in-law avoidance works among the Cheyenne without needing to know who introduced the custom to whom.

EVOLUTIONISM IN VICTORIAN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY used the comparative method to develop theories of the parallel development of institutions such as the family, technology, and religion through identical stages in different parts of the world. Evolutionists assumed that parallel development was the result of psychic unity, that all people everywhere thought alike. Primitive peoples, like children, were yet to go through the more advanced stages of development. It is commonly assumed that evolutionary anthropologists were influenced by Darwin, but in fact most of them were not very interested in notions like the ‘survival of the fittest.’ What they shared with him was a belief that human culture had developed over a very long time.

FUNCTIONALISM the name given to theoretical approaches that flourished in British anthropology between the 1920s and 1960s. Functionalists explained social institutions and cultural practices in terms of the needs they fulfilled at the present time. Such institutions and practices were interconnected parts of a social or cultural system. Functionalists did not usually focus on the history or evolution of social systems. Anthropologists today distinguish between two varieties of functionalism: one was associated with Malinowski, the other was associated with Radcliffe-Brown.

1. MALINOWSKIAN FUNCTIONALISM Bronislaw Malinowski believed that the primary concern of all social institutions was the fulfillment of basic biological and psychological needs that all humans shared, such as food, shelter, safety, and reproduction. Because we are social animals living in groups, we are organized so as to assist one another, and we therefore have a further, secondary need for norms, customs, and beliefs to support the frameworks of that organization. For example, Malinowski believed that gardening served the basic need for nutrition, that rituals associated with planting organized people to get necessary work done, and that garden magic relieved people’s anxiety about possible crop failure. This emphasis on utility was seldom found in some earlier evolutionary theories that portrayed ‘primitive’ peoples as irrational and bound by tradition.

2. STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONALISM the version of functionalism associated with A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and his disciples such as Meyer Fortes and Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard in Britain and Fred Eggan in the United States. Radcliffe-Brown, who was greatly influenced by the great French sociologist, Émile Durkheim, advanced a version of the organic analogy which involves a comparison between society and a mammalian body, inasmuch as social institutions (structures) were likened to the various organs that maintain the body as a working system. The actual meaning of religious practices was less important than the fact that they contributed to the solidarity of the group. Political and legal institutions, as well as more informal methods of social control, were explained in terms of their contribution to the maintenance of equilibrium in the system. Unlike Malinowski, structural-functionalists had little interest in speculations concerning biological, as opposed to social, needs. They believed that their mission was to discover universal, synchronic regularities or ‘laws’ relating to social structure by use of the comparative method. They rejected historical and evolutionary explanations. In sociology at Harvard, Talcott Parsons developed a version of structural-functionalism which synthesized ideas from both Durkheim and Weber.

The KULA is a form of ceremonial exchange carried out by the Trobrianders and other island populations of the Massim Archipelago which is situated in the Pacific to the NE of New Guinea. The best known form of kula involves the trade of objects which must include white armbands (mwali) and red shell necklaces (soulava) that were worn as adornments but had no practical utility. The trade often involved long trips between islands in out-rigger canoes. Visitors received gifts from hosts and returned with them. The necklaces and armshells, many of which had their own reputations and histories, traveled in opposite directions, ‘clockwise’ and ‘counter-clockwise’ around the ‘kula ring.’ No haggling and no direct bargaining for specific valuables was allowed, and there was a strict rule of reciprocity. If you received a good soulava from your kula partner when you visited him, you should endeavor to give him an equivalent mwali when he visited you some years later. Malinowski was the first to describe the kula in detail. He thought it prevented warfare. He endorsed Mauss’s comparison of kula with potlatch and other forms of ceremonial exchange. The kula is still carried out in the Massim.

MANA is a Polynesian word that may merely mean ‘off limits.’ A hundred years ago many anthropologists believed that belief in an awe-inspiring magical power (mana), possessed by kings, priests, and sacred animals or objects, was a common feature of primitive religion.

NEO-EVOLUTIONISM is a term that was applied to the writings of Leslie White, Julian Steward, and their various followers. White saw the harnessing of increasing amounts of energy per capita as the key to cultural evolution. Unlike Steward, he was not very interested in specific adaptations to the environment. Steward was less concerned than White with universal schemes and more interested in tracing particular evolutionary patterns such as the development of state societies in areas where vast public works were required to distribute water to farming populations. Neo-evolutionism was a self-conscious return to the tradition of Tylor and Morgan (particularly in White’s case), but it tried to avoid their ethnocentrism.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION once described by James Clifford and Clifford Geertz as ‘deep hanging-out,’ necessitates the anthropological fieldworker’s immersion for a period of several months or even a few years in the day-to-day details of the lives of the people who are being studied. As an informal, unstructured methodology it may be contrasted to more formal procedures such as the administration of questionnaires and structured interviews. It was advocated by Malinowski, who claimed it was much superior to quick, fieldwork surveys as a tool for understanding other cultures.

POLITICAL ECONOMY See CONFLICT THEORY and essay on Eric Wolf.

POSTMODERNISM is the term used to cover a variety of approaches that developed in American anthropology in the 1980s. The term originally referred to different movements in philosophy, literary criticism, and architecture. Anthropological postmodernism, as exemplified in the 1986 volume, Writing Cultures, combined some elements evident in other fields, such as scepticism of grand theories and a blurring of the barriers between disciplines and genres (e.g. between ethnographies and novels) with some of the concerns of French poststructuralist philosophers such as Michel Foucault about inequalities of power in relationships between therapists, educators, and/or social scientists and their subjects. Postmodern anthropologists stress that ethnography should ideally reflect negotiation and co-operation between anthropologists and subjects in the creation of texts.

The POTLATCH is a form of ceremonial exchange performed by the coastal peoples of Southern Alaska, British Columbia, and Northern Washington State, including ...

Table of contents

• FIFTY KEY ANTHROPOLOGISTS
• ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ROUTLEDGE
• CONTENTS
• ALPHABETICAL LIST OF CONTENTS
• CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF CONTENTS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• FIFTY KEY ANTHROPOLOGISTS
• APPENDIX 1 Some key anthropological terms
• APPENDIX 2 Timeline
• INDEX