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The History of Anthropology

One of the most interesting differences between working at the RAI and in a university department, is the way that the history of anthropology looks different. In departments, we are used to assuming that the discipline coalesced around Malinowski’s seminar at the LSE and his followers to form modern social anthropology, with its characteristic fieldwork. University courses differ to the extent that this may be featured: occasionally it is just mentioned in passing, occasionally it is treated in more detail. However, it remains the default understanding.

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Yet, at the RAI after I took up the post, we began systematically to explore the archives, and to hold seminars on the history of the discipline. As this investigation continued, I began to realise that the conventional understanding is so simplified as to be very misleading. In sum, it appears that as Malinowski took his chair at the LSE, he did not wish to call it ‘social’ anthropology, simply calling it ‘anthropology’. Likewise, far from there being a sharp break between his own work and that of his teacher Westermarck, he appears to have adopted quite readily many of his ideas including a scepticism toward survivals and the idea of functional analysis (that is, that societal institutions may be an expression of human biological characteristics). Social Anthropology, on the other hand, was part of the Oxford anthropology department as it was founded by Marett, and he was insistent that the chair, when it came to be founded at All Souls should be called Social Anthropology. Radcliffe-Brown duly took up the post.

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When Radcliffe-Brown took up the post in Oxford, he very quickly argued with his colleagues, insisting that there should be a different stream within the generalist anthropology diploma programme that could be called distinctly ‘social anthropology’, and proposed such a scheme in writing. This scheme is remarkably prescient, indeed it looks very close to the courses in social anthropology that were taught all round the country after the Second World War. After the war, when Evans-Pritchard took up the post, it is this scheme too that he eventually adopted, and it took institutional form not only though his institute, but also through his founding of the Association of Social Anthropologists.

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The different may seem slight, but in fact it is crucial. If Malinowski and his seminar is not regarded as a the main fountainhead for later inspiration, it means that it is easier to see how the nineteenth century currents of thought influenced the later developments: they can be regarded as a more of a continuum than a watershed. It also removes the need to assume that Malinowski brought in the ideas that came to make up social anthropology from his doctoral studies of Mach, as has often been thought.

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I have written up this argument in various ways, as may be seen in the list below, and continue to explore its implications.

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References

Shankland, D. 2022 ‘Edward Westermarck, a Master Ethnographer, and His Monograph Ritual and Belief in Morocco (1926)’, Chapter Three in Ethnographers before Malinowski, edited by Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 117-152.

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Shankland, D. 2019 ‘Anthropology and its History’, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. Vol. 144 Issue 1; 51-76.

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Shankland, D. 2019 ‘The Role of History in the Teaching of Anthropology’, in Teaching Anthropology, Vol. 9 No. 1; 1-9.

Open access: The Role of History in the Teaching of Anthropology | Teaching Anthropology

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