Critique of Anthropology 1976 Llobera

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1976 2: 17Critique of AnthropologyJosep R Llobera

The History of Anthropology as a Problem

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17

The History of Anthropology as a Problem

by Josep R Llobera

Introduction .

The process of historical differentiation which anthropology has undergonesince the Second World War has resulted in the emergence of a plethoraof specializations within our discipline. We now have political anthropology,cognitive anthropology, economic anthropology, urban anthropology andmany others.

1 These specialities - and there seems to be no end to thisprocess of fission - have been progressively accepted by the professionsand are being taught in most universities, both in Great Britain and inthe United States.

s

’

Even mo re striking is the fact that anthropologists are encouraged totake an early specialization, often starting with their doctoral research.It has been suggested that these specializations require of the anthropolo-gist a close attention to the developments taking place in other sciences,rather than to other parts of anthropology itself. In this sense, the

economic anthropologist, for example, would share more with theeconomist than with the political anthropologist, for instance. On theother hand, if it is still true that the main concern of anthropology iswith primitive societies, it is also the case that, for a number of wellknown reasons (J R Llobera 1974), more and more research is beingundertaken in the so-called civilized world. The truth is that the ever

precarious unity of anthropology is under increasing stress. ,

There are other specializations, however, that although potentiallyintegrative of anthropology, are surprisingly played down. I am referringhere to anthropological theory and history of anthropology (and I shouldalso add epistemology of the social sciences). It is true that anthropologi-cal theory is sometimes encouraged, but always subordinated to themain purpose of anthropology, to what since Boas and Malinowski hasbeen distinctive of our discipline: fieldwork.

This situation is highly irregular if compared with other disciplines,for instance, physics or biology, where the theoretical and experimentalsides are well differentiated, and where the histories of these disciplinesare usually written by specialists. The case of anthropology is totallydifferent. Ideally, the practitioner of our discipline is conceived of asa sort of belated Renaissance person. In the good old days, she or he,during the active years, was supposed to account for the whole cultureof a people (or even a number of peoples). Later on, she or he would be

’

in a position to theorize (or perhaps we should say, compare). Finally,in the crepuscular years, if there was the inclination, there would betime for writing a history of the discipline.



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Times have changed and anthropologists are not expected to study a wholeculture, but only a relatively small chunk of it. But she or he is still

expected to theorize at a later stage and, though more rarely, puts a closeto his or her academic career with another partial and often unfinishedhistory of anthropology.

The increasing process of atomization2 that the discipline has sufferedover the last thirty years, reflected not only in thematic, but also in

geographical specialization, is something that anthropology can not affordany longer. We are reaching a point where communication is no longerpossible and where masses of often irrelevant detail tend (as someone putit in the context of historical research) ’to hide a lack of insight and theabsence of all power to interpret’ (Kaufmann W 1960: v). In a recent

interview, C. Levi-Strauss has expressed the need for the separationbetween theoreticians and fieldworkers to solve this problem, if onlybecause ’in the last fifty years such an enormous mass of data has beencollected that there should be some people dedicated to putting some orderin it and to the interpretation of these facts’ (Levi-Strauss C 1974 p26).Without accepting the implicit empiricism of this statement, we can stillagree that it’s time for the spinners to make way for the weavers.

Indeed, there is hardly any need to add that behind this way of thinking liesthe idea that the skills required for theoretical work can neitherbe improvised nor spontaneously develop out of the field experience.This, of course, stands in direct opposition to what our naive empiricistsand inductivists seem to believe. I strongly maintain that theoretical skillscan only be developed by special training and dedication which are hardlycompatible with extended fieldwork.

. I

Let us now turn to the main concern of this article, namely the questionof the history of anthropology. The situation here is very much the same.At its best, history of anthropology is considered a by-product of teachinganthropological theory, and in any case, an activity to be developed towardthe end of an academic career, when fieldwork is no longer feasible ordesirable. In fact, as a proper specialization (as we shall see later) thehistory of anthropology would require of its practitioners an adequate trainingin at least three directions: anthropological theory (past and present), history(particularly of the sciences) and epistemology (particularly of the socialsciences). It is apparent that such an endeavour is incompatible withsustained fieldwork.

Having established these initial points, I would like to discuss two questionswhich might easily arise, and that unless dealt with properly, could becomeserious objections to the position I maintain. First, why should we botherat all with the history of anthropology? and second, what is wrong with thestandard way of writing histories of anthropology? -



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It is not my intention to plead for the relevance of the history of thesciences in general in the university curricula, since others have doneit far better than I possibly could (Butterfield H 1959, Clagget M 1959,and Crombie A C 1963). As to the history of anthropology and of thesocial sciences in general, it is not only a question of displaying thedifferent historical moments of their scientific rationality in thecorresponding social matrix, but also a matter of showing their directrelevance for current social theory. As we shall see later, this pointfully justifies my stand that the history of anthropology should not beleft only to antiquarians or specialized historians (if they ever appear).I mean that it should also be practised by people trained mainly inanthropology, in the current theories and the problems of the discipline.

It is often said, following A. N. Whitehead (1925) that a science whichdoes not forget its founders is lost. This is certainly the reason put

4 forward by many anthropologists to play down the history of the discipline.It is alleged that we don’t run the risk of getting lost provided we keepdeveloping our theoretical corpus by means of setting hypotheses andsubsequently testing them in the field. But is this really the way thingshappen? Aren’t we behaving like those practical men referred to byJ. M. Keynes who think that they are quite exempt from any intellectualinfluences but who are in fact slaves of some defunct theoretician?

The recent crisis of identity and confidence of anthropology (which isstill very much with us) has shown, if anything, that whether for goodor for worse we still depend on the theories of the past. How can weotherwise explain the return to evolutionism, to Durkheim, Weber, Marxand to even lesser mortals. This kind of situation is rare in the natural

sciences. 3 So the truth is that we have not been able to get rid of ourancestors.

&dquo;-

As we shall see in the second part of this paper, a proper history ofanthropology ought to be able to account for this peculiar characteristicof anthropology (and of the social sciences in general). Provisionally,we can say that the reason is that scientificity i. e. the scientific statusof anthropology is in suspense and this is why history and theory fuseat all times. 4 Of course, the degree of fusion is not always the same,but varies from one historical period to another. For example, the

period of structural-functionalist supremacy (Gouldner A W 1970)appears to us as a time when there was a clear separation betweentheory and history; it seems as if there was a wide consensus then onwhat anthropology was - its theories and methods, its scope and aims.This period is over. Anthropology is now a battleground for competingtheories which want to establish supremacy. The struggle is justbeginning.

In a sense this situation is not uncommon in the history of scientificdisciplines. In times of crisis (Althusser L 1974) when the practitionersof a discipline are no longer confident in its abilities to deliver thegoods, i. e. to produce knowledge that is accepted as objective by the



20

scientific community (and maybe also by the wider community), there isa temporary proliferation of theories.

The Kuhnian model tries to explain this transitional stage in the naturalsciences (Kuhn T S 1962), but what is specific to the social sciences is theform that this blossoming of new theoretical approaches takes. It consists

basically of adopting or re-thinking, if you prefer, past theories. It means

the revival, no doubt in a somewhat modified form, of theories which had

already been shelved (or so most people thought); neo-evolutionism is acase in point.

It is clear, then, that a history of anthropology has direct relevance for theunderstanding of the theoretical state of the discipline today. Only a properhistory of anthropology can bring to the forefront the progressive orregressive character of the different research programs in whichanthropologists have been involved over the years.

The second question that I wanted to tackle involves a critique of the wayin which most histories of anthropology are being written at present.

The first thing that strikes the interested observer is the scarcity of texts. 5

G. W. Stocking (1966) could rightly say that R. H. Lowie’s The History ofEthnological Theory had hardly any competitor as a text in the field of thehistory of anthropology for nearly thirty years. Ten years later the panoramais somewhat different. There has been a proliferation of histories ofanthropology, some general (the so-called ’from the beginnings to thepresent day’), others national or restricted to a period of time. 6 This

phenomenon seems to reflect the growing demand for texts on the subject,particularly for those which can be used at an undergraduate level. Most ofthese texts have as their sole objective to present an ’acceptable’ genealogyof the discipline as seen from the perspective of a particular practitioneror school.

In a certain sense what is at stake in these histories is a particular wayof seeing the past of the discipline. The authors of these histories aredefending what they believe to be the anthropological tradition; they seethemselves as the custodians of this tradition. In fact, whether consciousof it or not, they are providing the discipline with an acceptable line ofancestors. 7 .

Experience has familiarized anthropologists with the fact that genealogiesdon’t always reflect actual connections. They can be and often are manipul-ated by the ’natives’ to suit different interests. This fact has been widelyacknowledged, so much so that, in the article ’Genealogy’ of a social sciencesdistionary, J. Middleton writes that: ’It is now generally understood thatgenealogies are not always historically accurate statements, but may bechanged in order to provide support for, and validation of, actual presentday relationships between persons who feature in them (Gould J and KolbW L 1964 p282). _



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A case study of what I have been saying about re-writing genealogiesor adapting intellectual filiations to the heat of the moment is the placeof Karl Marx in the histories of anthropology. I have chosen Marxbecause I happen to be engaged in research on the connections betweenMarx and anthropology. It is not my intention to enter into the polemicsof how relevant he might be for past or modern anthropology, but ratherto try to explain the shifts that have recently occurred in the assessmentsof Marx. The main point I am trying to make could be demonstrated withrespect to many authors and historical periods, because, as D Hymeshas recently put it, ’we have no adequate history of anthropology andno account of anthropologists’ consciousness of their history, butindividual anthropologists have many diverse reasons for tracingindividual strands to one or another early point in time’ (Hymes D, ed.1974 p20).

Returning now to the problem of Marx; as I see it, it’s not so much to

explain why Marx was excluded from most histories of anthropology upto the appearance of M. Harris’ The Rise of Anthropological Theory(1968), but to account for his inclusion in recent histories. It is a factthat neither Marx’s theories nor even his name ever appeared in anyof the histories of anthropology prior to 1968. 8 To my understandingthere are a number of reasons which account for this long silence:

1 The peripheral attention paid by Marx to primitive societies.2 The anti-evolutionist bias in most of the writers and the identifica-

tion of Marx’s theories with those of a minor evolutionist not worth

referring to.3 The anti-socialist and anti-soviet standpoint of Western anthropology.

However, in recent years a number of anthropologists (mainly American)engaged in writing histories of the discipline have thought it necessaryor opportune to refer more or less extensively to Marx and to Marxistapproaches in general as part of anthropology. 9 Among the recenthistories I would like to include, besides Harris’, are a rather unknownbook by E. Becker (1971) and two very recent general histories: A.Malefijt (1974) and F. Voget (1975). Finally, I would also like to referto the article ’Anthropology’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1974).Although not strictly historical, Dell Hymes’ ’Introduction’ (Hymes Ded. 1974) is also interesting. These recent inclusions of Marx are some-what surprising and undoubtedly represent a radical veer with respect toprevious histories of the discipline where, as we have seen, the name ofMarx was hardly ever mentioned.

Let’s start with M. Harris (1968). In this book we have a history ofanthropology in which, considering the then current perspective ofanthropology, Marx is somewhat suddenly not only included or ’recovered’as an intellectual ancestor, but his theories are actually said to represent’achievements of unparalleled importance for a science of man’ (1968 p5).A full chapter of over thirty pages is dedicated to ’Dialectical Materialism’in a book in which ’British Social Anthropology’ and ’French Structuralism’get hardly more than fifty pages each.



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Our pre-1968 histories of the discipline were written under the implicitor explicit assumption that ’cultural anthropology (...) developed entirelyindependently from Marxism’ (Meyer A 1954 p22). 10 Harris’ thesis is

that anthropology ’developed entirely in reaction to, instead of independentlyof, Marxism’ (1968 p249). Of course, it was Harris’ use of a culturalmaterialist strategy as a heuristic principle that brought the theories ofMarx to the forefront. In other words, Harris was prepared to give Marx’good marks’, to use the slang of some historians of science, in so far ashe had ’anticipated’ his cultural materialism, but he would relentlesslycriticize Marx for having shackled ’cultural materialism to the spooks ofHegel’s dialectic’ (1968 p5).

Harris’ book was written at a time when the evolutionist revival, with its

generalizing and nomothetic drives, was on the offensive for the first timeand it was crucial for the movement to establish an illustrious ancestry.The appearance of so-called French Marxist Anthropology in the late sixtieswas of course another factor of the greatest importance in explaining theacceptance of Marx as an intellectual ancestor in most histories of thediscipline. Of course, these later publications did not affect Harris’ book.One should also be aware that the increasing interest in Marx shown byanthropologists in the late sixties and after, is part of a wider and rathercomplex phenomenon which has affected the whole of the social sciences.

A case of radical change with respect to the assessment of Marx can beseen in the article ’Anthropology’ of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1974).It is well known that these articles tend to represent established opinionand that in the past they were often written by famous anthropologists suchas E. B. Tylor, B. Malinowski and others. In the 15th edition (1974) Marxappears for the first time as part of the anthropological tradition. In thesection entitled ’The historical background of anthropology’, which coversthe history of the discipline up to the 19th century in 85 lines, there is aparagraph of 17 lines dedicated to Marx. On the other hand, the section’Developments in cultural anthropology’, which dedicates 192 lines to themain anthropological schools of the 20th century, includes Neo-evolutionismand Neo-Marxism as two of them, along with Boas, Mauss, diffusionism,functionalism and structuralism and cultural psychology.

For those who do not see the need for an evolutionary or Marxist revivalin anthropology or are not prepared to satisfy the growing student demandfor a critical or radical re-orientation of anthropology, the inclusion ofMarx in a history of the discipline creates certain intellectual problems.After all, why should he be included? That people who write histories ofanthropology are not always conscious of these problems can be seen in theabove mentioned article of the Encyclopedia Britannica (apparently a jointventure of P. Mercier and the editorial board). If Marx’s contribution to thesocial sciences is such a ludicrous thing as economic determinism, whygive him such a prominent place in the article?

In Malefijt’s book (1974) there is a contradiction of a different kind, nonethe- -

less related to the problem just mentioned. On the one hand, the author



23

tells us that Marx and Engels ’elevated social studies to the rank ofscience’ (1974 p108), but on the other hand, we don’t see this statementfully justified in the text, particularly since we are told that ’Marx’sown speculation was that all social activities were ultimately reducibleto economic motivations and processes’ (1974 p107).

In his monumental history (1975) F. Voget was indeed faced with thesame problem: what to do with the skeleton that he had suddenly foundin the cupboard. He could not hail Marx as the ’Darwin of the socialsciences’ as Harris had done, but he agreed that Marx should be accordeda place in the history of anthropology because he ’opened up new territoryin the analysis of societal evolution based on conflict and social adapta-tion’ (1975 p162). Of course, he is aware that anthropologists haveignored Marx for nearly a century, but he is not prepared to dig deeplyinto the causes of this fact. He is quite happy with positing the irrelev-ance of Marxism for primitive societies; the recent revival of Marxismthen has to be attributed to the changes taking place in primitivesocieties, to the fact that these societies are now in a process of

industrialization; in this explanation he seems to agree with R. Firth(1972). Of course, the snag with this kind of explanation is that botheconomics and sociology have also ignored Marxism over the same periodof time.

I should like to close this panorama of histories of anthropology with aquick look at E. Becker’s Sketch for a Critical History of Anthropology(1971). The title already suggests a somewhat different approach.Firstly, the word ’sketch’ points to the fact that only the prominentfeatures will be dealt with (contrary to most historians where theinfatuation with details often hides the main lines of development).Secondly, a ’critical history’ can only be meaningful from a certainepistemological stand openly assumed; in Becker’s case his convictionis that the science of man got lost somewhere on the way and thatcriticism is the ’only way out of scientific dead ends’ (1971:ix).

Becker’s approach is normative; his main vision is to recover what hethinks is the now stranded single vision that the science of man had inthe 18th century. This vision includes three angles: ’1 - the centralproblem of the science of man: how do we explain human differences?2 - the large historical panorama of human development, which providesthe background for this explanation, 3 - the superordinate value scalefor judging the wisdom and adequacy of man’s social arrangements’(1971 p108). From these premises it would come as no surprise that theRousseau-Marx tradition plays such a prominent role in Becker’s Sketch.

For me, the case study of the place of Marx in the history of anthropologyhas the value of a symptomatic example. A.s I have said before, it wouldbe easy to illustrate my point with other examples. The important thingis that it reveals that the practice of writing histories of a discipline isnot as ’innocent’ as many would like us to believe. How could it be



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otherwise when, as I hope to show in a more detailed way in the secondpart of this paper, the state of the history of our discipline is in such apreliminary stage? How can we assess the place of Marx in the historyof anthropology if the picture of ’Marx, the anthropologist’ has only startedto emerge? 1 On the other hand, how can one write more or less generalhistories when we lack the basic monographs on authors, historical periods,conceptual developments etc?

In conclusion, it is apparent that the role of the true historian of anthro-pology is not unlike the anthropologist in the field. Both collect genealogiesand both know that these genealogies cannot be taken at face value. Asideologies that they are, these genealogies are not intended to explainhistory but to justify the structure of the present.

I hope I have established, admittedly in a rather tentative way, (a) theimportance of the history of anthropology in the present conjuncture: and(b) the inadequate way in which history is being practised at present. 12

II

The second part of this paper is decidedly programmatic and normative.It is my intention to present - after a rather dense and compressed summaryof the problematic of the history of the sciences - my point of view, whichemerges from an ongoing criticism of the state of the art. This criticism,of course, is only possible from the vantage point of a certain epistemo-logical conception. However, I want to emphasize the fact that the generalscheme that I will use to look at the history of anthropology is not partisan.Rather, it is a theoretical tool which I hope accounts for the different waysof writing history. In other words, the purpose of this scheme is to make

explicit the principles which render the different approaches possible.Finally, I should like to add that this general scheme, although it originateswithin the framework of the history of the natural sciences, also has somevalidity for the social sciences, provided that the specificity i. e. the

specific nature, of the latter is taken into account.

The Problematic of the History of the Sciences .

The fact that such a scheme exists at all is due to the prodigious develop-ment of the history of the sciences that occurred in the years after theSecond World War. At present, one can say that its influence goes wellbeyond strictly disciplinary boundaries and in a way has become - at leastin its Kuhnian version - a pilot discipline for the social sciences, in a

similar way as biology in the past or linguistics more recently.

It may appear as a gross oversimplification to assert the novelty of thehistory of the sciences. Of course, there have always been ’histories’ ofscientific discoveries which described, usually in a very detailed way, _

the empirical events that made possible the progress of knowledge fromignorance to truth. These histories are usually accompanied by heroic



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biographies of scientists and even spicy chronicles. Indeed, veryeminent scientists wrote histories of their own disciplines. But thesehistories were normally the by-product of their scientific activities orhad strictly pedagogical ends. These histories, which I’ll refer toas ’traditional’, had a very limited range of problems, since theirmain objective was to classify, in a rather manichean way, the scientistsof the past into ’good’ or ’bad’ according to whether or to what extentthey had anticipated the present state of the discipline.

The new historiography of the sciencesl4 emerged in the intersticialspace between history, epistemology, and the sciences. It is by nomeans uniform in its theoretical approach, but I think that there is an

underlying problematic, in the sense used by L. Althusser of a total andautonomous intellectual structure, which can be expressed in two pairsof oppositions: internalism versus externalism and continuism versusdiscontinuism. These two pairs of oppositions define by inclusion orexclusion certain areas and ways of doing research into the history ofthe sciences. 15 5

The opposition between internalism and externalism refers to the focusof the research. In order to explain scientific development the internal-ist concentrates almost exclusively on the scientific works (theoreticaland experimental problems as defined by a scientific community), whilethe externalist also considers other influences, such as technological,socio-economic, institutional, political, and ideological factors. For theformer, the interaction of scientific ideas (or in a wider sense, theintellectual interaction) suffices to explain the dynamics of science, whilefor the latter other conditions - external to science - are. required.

The controversy between internalists and externalists centred upon theproblem of the so-called Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries. For the internalists the Scientific Revolution was

fundamentally an intellectual revolution; for the externalists its originshad to be sought elsewhere: in the development of capitalism. Thisopposition was subsequently generalized to include not only the appearanceof modern science, but also to explain its steady growth in the followingcenturies and the developments up to the present day. In its extreme

forms, the internalists place science out of society, while the externalists

challenge its objectivity with independence of an hic et nunc society.

The controversy between internalists and externalists is far from beingsettled, in spite of statements from both sides that they have won thewar, and it will probably rage for a long time. Unfortunately the rulesof the game are not yet clearly defined. There is neither firm agreementon the meaning of such terms as ’pure science’, ’applied science’ and’technology’ (though most internalists tend to equate science to ’purescience’), nor is there a clear delineation of the range and scope of theexternal factors. What are these factors supposed to influence? Thecognitive aspect of science, its origins, its developments, its shifts?And is their influence equal for all times and cultures or does it varyfrom one society to another?



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The opposition between continuism and discontinuism refers to the vexedquestion of whether there is a continuous development of knowledge fromcommon sense to scientific knowledge. The continuist states that progressand historical change take place step by step, gradually, and that scientistsare greatly indebted to theii predecessors. The discontinuist sees know-ledge as being subverted, as changing from one period to another. For thecontinuist, science has always existed, albeit in rudimentary forms.Ideally, the discontinuist sees science (and sometimes each science inparticular) as an epistemological eruption which emerges in a particularhistorical period.

Some continuists conceive of scientific progress as a process of indiscrimin-ate accumulation, others prefer to look at it as a process of selectiveaccumulation. All use the idea of precursors; this is based on the principlethat to every thinker one can find a list of forerunners who show different

degrees of intellectual kinship, as a technique to facilitate the transitionfrom one period to another, thus contributing to the idea that there are norevolutions or abrupt changes in science.

The discontinuists think that scientific progress takes place by abrupt andsudden leaps forward which subvert the ancient order. They talk aboutscientific revolutions. For example, they believe that modern science, theone originating in the 16th and 17th centuries, represents a radical change,a discontinuity, with respect to medieval science. Discontinuists oftenconcern themselves with the problem of the beginnings of science, be itthe beginnings of science in general which they place in a particular historicalperiod (Mesopotamia, Greece, Western Europe) or with the beginnings ofeach specific science.

Obviously the discontinuists reject the idea of precursors, but they acceptthat scientific ideas which were born in one individual can be developedand brought to completion by another. Their main complaint is againstthe assumption that theories, concepts, experiments and the like can belongto different historical periods and can be easily transferred from oneintellectual space to another. This activity, which may be condoned inthe practising scientist who, for pedagogical reasons or with the purposeof enlisting some scientific authority of the past, is trying to trace thefiliation of his theories to a forerunner, is inexcusable for the properhistorian in so far as his attitude represents a distortion of the past in away that makes it practically unintelligible.

As a result of the polemic between continuists and discontinuists a numberof areas of research have been delineated. Three of them seem to me ofthe greatest interest: the emergence of two different types of history, thequestion of the beginnings of science, and the relations between historyof science and epistemology.

The first effect of the dispute between continuists and discontinuists hasmade it possible to distinguish clearly between two types of histories.



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On the one hand, a type of history in which the theories of the past areclassified as correct or incorrect according to whether they do or do notconform with the current practice of science. This attitude has beenreferred to by H. Butterfield as the ’ Whig interpretation of history’; itinforms the typical history of scientists, historians, inductivists, andpositivists. Its only concern is to show the triumphant progress of sciencefrom the beginnings up to the present, always looking at past achievementsfrom the standpoint of the scientific attitudes of today.

There is another kind of history which looks at the past in a differentway; it does not look only at the concepts confirmed by the scientificpractice of today, but also at those that have been abandoned. It worksunder the assumption that what now has been abandoned and excluded wasonce held to be true and might have been considered indissociable fromwhat we still consider to be true today. In other words, it tries to under-stand the work of the scientists of the past as a whole and not as a mixtureof scientific and non-scientific theories. 16 This kind of history ’is aneffort to investigate and try to understand to what extent supersedednotions, attitudes, or methods were in their time in advance, and conse-quently how the superseded past remains the past of an activity for whichwe should retain the name of scientific’ (Canguilhem G 1968 p14).

These two ways of writing history have been labelled with different names.For example, in the history of anthropology, G. W. Stocking (1968) talksabout ’presentism’ and ’historicism’ respectively, but I would prefer toavoid the term ’historicism’ altogether since it has so many differentconnotations. 17 A similar, but by no means equal classification is theone put forward by G. Bachelard (1951). He distinguishes betweensanctioned history (histoire sanctionee) and outdated history (histoireperimee); the former is a history of thoughts which have been confirmedby contemporary science, the latter is a history of thoughts which donot make sense from the present state of scientific rationality.

There is a crucial difference between Whiggism and sanctioned history,in that although both use the concept of recurrence, Bachelard does notbelieve in linear, but dialectical progress - progress that takes placeby sudden abrupt mutations. Of course, the proper historian has to payattention to both histories.

The second area of crucial interest that has developed around the contro-versies between continuists and discontinuists has to do with the questionof the beginnings of science or of each specific science. This is, of

course, related to the wider and more complex question of what is science.The latter does not seem to bother the natural scientist too much, but itis time-consuming for philosophers of science and social scientists.

A number of answers have been given to these two questions. As a matterof fact, answers can only be provided - short of adopting the diffuseattitude of the extreme continuists - by accepting an epistemological



28

intervention of one kind or another. The whole issue can thus only betackled if one is aware of the different epistemological issues that exist.For a positivist, for example, the crucial element which defines thebeginnings of science is methodological: the imposition of certain standardsof observation and experience; the empiricist sees the primordial featurein the collection of facts; others prefer to talk about the delineation anddefinition of an object; finally, the rational materialists insist that the

definition of a science is its history - the history of the real conditions ofproduction of its concepts (the formation of the concepts and theories) -and see each science as constituting itself by breaking away from a previousideology.

The third area of interest refers to the relation between history of scienceand epistemology. It is clear from what has been said up to now that it isneither possible nor desirable to keep history of science and epistemologyseparate. We can say with Lakatos that epistemology without history isempty and that history without epistemology is blind, but otherwise theyshould not be confused. There is always the danger, in a pure sanctioned

type of history, of reducing history to epistemology, while the other extremewould be to reduce history to a pure narration of events without anyevaluation.

As to epistemology it can either mean the universalizing project of the ,

philosophy of the sciences or a certain normative stand which claims todraw its judgements from a continuous and up to date contact with eachscience and in consequence is bound to be provisional and changing.

Some crucial issues in the history of anthropology

The general scheme that I have presented delineates in its very broad linesthe quintessence of the current problematic of the history of the sciences.It is my intention now to examine the suitability of this scheme for thehistory of anthropology (and in general for the social sciences).

The first thing to be noticed, as T. S. Kuhn has aptly remarked, is that’the new historiography (of science) has not yet touched the history of thesocial sciences’ (1968 p77). Kuhn does not mention the question of whetherhe thinks that the tools developed to deal with the fully-fledged sciencescan also be applied to the social sciences, the scientificity of which is insuspense or uncertain to say the least. It is true that in the last chapterof Kuhn’s famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), a referenceis made to the pre-paradigmatic stage in which the social sciences are found.In spite of this cautionary reference, the social scientists have uncriticallyransacked Kuhn’s theories and made very indiscriminate and biassed useof the concept of paradigm.

In what follows I propose to examine three issues which I consider crucialand preliminary to any attempt to write a proper history of anthropology;

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I believe that until now these issues have not received appropriate, if any,



29

attention. I’ll refer to them respectively as the problem of the epistemicstatus of anthropology (i. e. the reliability of its knowledge), the problemof the beginnings of anthropology and the problem of theoreticalexternalism.

(1) The problem of the epistemic status of anthropology

Unless it is willing to start on the wrong footing, a history of anthropologycan not avoid a consideration of the epistemic status of the discipline.This, of course, requires the use of certain criteria to separate sciencefrom non-science, unless one is prepared to accept that there is nothingspecific and differential that can be called scientific knowledge. But ifscientific knowledge, as I firmly endorse, is different from religious,magical and other forms of knowledge, it is crucial that we provide thecriteria for this distinction.

A number of criteria are available (verifiability, falsifiability, logicalconsistency etc) which have been put forward by philosophers of science.As is well known, most of these criteria, if applied rigorously, come upwith the result that the social sciences, anthropology included, don’tstand up to the standards of scientificity (Boudon R 1968). But against theimperialist philosophies of science which impose abstract criteria result-ing from experience at best limited to the natural sciences, it is alwayspossible to demand specific criteria for the social sciences. It isunfortunate that for the most part the epistemological studies on thesocial sciences fail to recognize this specificity and rely heavily uponthe natural scientific model.

It is true that in the social sciences there has always been a significant,though minoritarian, trend (exemplified today by the phenomonologicaland Frankfurt schools among others) against blindly following the naturalscientific model, but this trend has often taken an anti-scientific biasaltogether, thus throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

One of the things that social scientists of one denomination or anotherhave accepted uncritically is their own object of knowledge. That thereshould be, for example, a science of man is seen as unproblematic, butMichel Foucault has been able to show when and how this specific objectof science appeared in the Western world, and why this event should beconsidered an eruption in the realm of knowledge; he also considers thepossible disappearance of this object (Foucault M 1970). Whether TheOrder of Things is for the human sciences what Kant’s Critique of PureReason was for the natural sciences - as G. Canguilhem (1968 p618) hassuggested - is to be seen, but there is no doubt that Foucault’s book,and his work in general, requires a closer attention from socialscientists than it has received until now.

The answer we give to the question of the epistemic status of anthropologyhas immediate consequences for the methodology of research into its



30

history. If we accept the cognitive autonomy of anthropological knowledge,in other words, if we assert the scientific character of anthropology, therewill be certain limits to what an external history of the discipline canexplain. Some extreme externalists and vulgar Marxists may find thisstatement unacceptable but I tend to agree with D. Lecourt that

&dquo;the effects of the external determinations (social, economic, ideo-logical and political determinations) are subject to the internalconditions (the norm of the true) of scientific practice. Here is aprinciple which rules out from the start all epistemological econom-ism, sociologism, and psychologism: it is indeed impossible toachieve a genesis of scientific concepts on the basis of what areknown as the social, economic, psychological (or even biological)conditions of scientific practice’ (1975 p14)

On the contrary, if we take anthropology to be non-scientific, it is apparentthat the external determinisms (what Mannheim used to call Seinsverbunden-heit) will be fully operative and that the criteria of the true can not befound at the internal level. Of course, this is not to deny the relativeautonomy of each ideological formation.

I am aware of the fact that any solution to this question can only be veryfragile. That does not mean that one can avoid taking an implicit orexplicit epistemological stand. Indeed, most of our historians of anthro-poloty are still practising within the traditional framework and consequentlythe dilemma would only affect them in a rather superficial way. The’connections’ between colonialism and anthropology, for example, whichin the recent years have occupied a number of anthropologists withhistorical leanings (Asad T 1973 and Leclerc G 1972), is only the tip ofan iceberg that has to be dealt with much more epistemological sophistica-tion than has existed until now. The correlations that can be establishedwithin this field - colonialism and anthropology - which I myself favoureda few years ago, are a poor substitute for a true explanation. This is notto deny the imperative need for research in this area, but to suggest thatwithout a framework which takes into account what the history and epistemol-ogy of the sciences has to offer, the results are bound to be extremely banaland lacking in insight.

A provisional way out of the question of the epistemic status of anthropologythat I advocate is to consider anthropology as a science in formation, thefoundations of which were laid down by the Enlightenment, but which neverconsolidated as a science because of a number of epistemological andideological obstacles that emerged around the discipline in the nineteenthcentury and that have persisted into the twentieth century. This epistemo-logical obstacle is the result of uncritically accepting the natural scientificmodel; among the epistemological obstacles I have been able to study arethe effects of inductivism, empiricism, mechanical materialism andfixist evolutionism. They are the result, consecrated by Comte and Stuart

-

Mill among others, of a misreading of the natural scientific practice and.

the denial of the specificity of the social sciences. I’ll return to this topic



31

later when dealing with the problems of theoretical externalism. Theideological obstacles are the result of the class character of the societywhich produced and developed the social sciences. The effect of theseobstacles is to drag the social sciences from the purely cognitive levelto the more practico-social one, where it can be used, directly orindirectly, by the ideology and interests of the dominant class.

The picture that emerges from this state of things for anthropology isin no way simple and clear-cut. We could represent it as a model ofopposed forces, some favouring a scientific anthropology, others leadingto a dead end and finally others paving the way for an ideological anthro-poloty. The picture that the discipline presents in each time and place(or to be more precise each thematic area within it) will vary according

0 to the strength of each force in that particular conjuncture. It is safe toassert that the scientificity of each thematic area is in inverse relationto the feasibility of its ideological manipulation in any given time andplace. That is one of the reasons why if one were to look at the area ofkinship studies one would probably find it more rigorous than other areasof anthropology.

Without the need to go into details, it should be apparent by now that arich pattern of research into the history of anthropology emerges as theresult of asking certain questions and giving certain answers to thesequestions.

(2) The problem of the beginnings of anthropology

One of the results of failing to enquire about the epistemic status of, anthropology is the inability to adequately tackle the problem of the

’

beginnings of our discipline. The following statement, as the openingparagraph of a booklet on the history of anthropology would probably beendorsed by most anthropologists:

&dquo;The history of anthropology is the history of ideas about man- his physical and cultural origins, development and nature.Men have always provided themselves with anthropological ideas.Thus in the broadest sense the study of the history of anthropologyembraces the anthropology of all peoples, past and present.

&dquo;

(Broce G 1973 p1 )

Broce’s position, whose extreme continuism is typical of the earlyhistories of science, can be found, in a pure or diluted form, in manyof the histories of anthropology mentioned above. This position fails tosee that whatever there is of scientific in anthropology has emerged as

’

the result of an epistemological break with the anthropological ideologiesof the past. It was only with the Enlightenment, as I’ll try to show later,that a conceptual revolution took place that enabled the formation, nomatter how precarious, of a science of man and society. That this shouldhave happened is the result of a number of factors which will be mentionedin due course; it can certainly not be attributed either to the speculation



32

of social philosophers or to the so-called discovery of new facts (theencounter with the ’primitives’), or even to a combination of both.

This position is not, in practice, incompatible with effectively placingthe origins in the nineteenth century, at the time of the emergence of

anthropology as a discipline (the period which elapsed from the foundationof the anthropological and ethnological societies to the seminal contributionsof E. B. Tylor and L. H. Morgan and others). Broce is probably suggestingthis when he tells us that by the expression ’history of anthropology’ oneusually understands the ’history of modern western anthropology’ (ibidpl).

Paying lip service to the so-called anthropological ideas of the past(Greece, Rome, Middle Ages, Renaissance etc) can be thus combined withaccepting effectively only nineteenth century anthropology. This contradic-tion appears as the result of a double confusion: the failure to distinguishbetween science and ideology and between theory and history. As a con-sequence of the first confusion we are presented, ideally, with a linealand cumulative picture of the development of anthropology from ignoranceto bliss. As a result of the second, the theories which are relevant for thepresent practice of anthropology get a favourable treatment (both in termsof space and eulogies). An extreme case would be some functionalisthistories of anthropology in which the nineteenth century evolutionists aresuppressed or nearly suppressed, and anthropology begins with F. Boas orB. Malinowski. It is not difficult to see how limited the usefulness of suchhistories is bound to be, since they are neither intended to discriminatebetween the scientific and non-scientific in anthropology at each momentnor to show whether and in which way, a theory represented progress withrespect to another.

The contradictions between extreme continuism and de facto presentismcan, and often are, mediated by a generous use of the idea of precursor.This precursitis virus, as it has been called by a number of historians ofscience (Clagget M (ed. ) 1959 and Canguilhem G 1968), is a disease of

epidemic proportions in the history of anthropology. 18 JVe have precursorsof anthropology in general and precursors for each of our present daytheoretical trends, concepts, etc. When presenting the problematic of thehistory of the sciences I have already mentioned the dangers involved in anindiscriminate use of the notion of precursor. Whatever virtues it mayhave to consolidate or to give prestige to our own theoretical positions,its use is extremely harmful for historians of a discipline, since most ofthe time this notion only accentuates those aspects of the thinkers of thepast that suit our needs, in this sense, in only explaining by deformingthe past.

This statement applies particularly to distant precursors such as Herodotus,Ibn Khaldun or Montaigne, to mention only a few. The things get more _

complicated when we deal with the thinkers of the Enlightenment and thenineteenth century. Although in most cases they get the same treatmentas thinkers from earlier periods, it can be alleged that the shelving of .



33

some of their theories was due to extra-scientific reasons. That, of

course, would explain their reappearance in recent times.

A different, though related question, is the continuous presence of somenineteenth century thinkers on the horizon of the social sciences; thisseems to point to some basic scientific abnormality which has not beenadequately considered. Indeed the question that has to be asked is of anepistemological kind: have we truly moved away from the two basicproblematics delineated by our founding fathers? It is certainly encourag-ing to see some historians and theoreticians of the social sciences admitto the existence of two very different problematics in the history of thesocial sciences (positivistic versus critical science of man and society).Nevertheless, my answer to the previous question is an unmitigated no.Furthermore I don’t think that the problem can be solved, as someanthropologists and sociologists seem to believe, through a synthesisbetween concensus and conflict theories (Collins R 1975). This suggestionis based upon the assumption that in the development of the social sciencesa line of thought (which for the sake of the argument we can refer to asthe Enlightenment-Marx tradition) was repressed - which is correct -and that what is characteristic of this tradition is best represented bythe idea of conflict - which is totally inappropriate.

This is not the place to develop my ideas on the pre-conditions of a scienceof man in history. I believe, however, that without a detailed study of theepistemological and ideological obstacles that historically affected thetwo basic problematics of the social sciences any attempt at an Aufhebungis bound to fail.

Returning now to the question of the beginnings of anthropology, it’s

striking that one of the pitfalls that most of our traditional historiansseem unaware of is the examination of the past from one perspective -the anthropological one - of the modern division of the social sciences.This attitude, of looking at the different social disciplines as if they wereautonomous, dangerous as it can be when applied to our present affairs,is undoubtedly fatal when we look at the past. I am not saying thathistorians should not concern themselves with what in many respectsmay be distinctive of anthropology, but rather than they should not forgetthe fundamental underlying unity of the sciences of man and society. Itis true that anthropologists have gone to some pains to differentiatethemselves from other social scientists, and there are institutional andother reasons which help to explain this state of affairs; but whatever thereasons may be, it is important to realize that the human and socialsciences share the same explanatory framework.

I have already mentioned how disappointing the approach to the beginningsof anthropology is in the current histories of our discipline. In a recentcollection of readings in the history of anthropology, we are told that’attention is too often wasted deciding when the history of anthropologybegins’ (Darnell R 1974 pll). The author assures us that it is possible tofind proponents for ’three major views’ on the problem of the origins of



34

anthropology: those who trace the origins back to Greece, those who seethe beginnings in the Renaissance and the voyages of exploration, andfinally, those who limit the term anthropology to the societes savantesof the nineteenth century. What happened to the Enlightenment, the eagerreader might ask. Could it be that it’s just a ’minor view’ ? But no, it’s

just that the Spanish soldiers of fortune, the travellers and the figures ofthe Enlightenment are all lumped together under the category ’Voyagersand Philosophers’. No surprise, then, when we are told that ’there is,of course, a sense in which anthropology is a universal of human culture(... ) a layman’s paradise; whoever is human can have opinions about thescience of man’ (ibid p12). Of course, I don’t see in what way this misplacedand edulcorated humanism, on the one hand, and the indiscriminate use ofancestors, on the other, can say much about anthropology as a science orconvince anybody that its history is worth looking at. Statements of thiskind only show how blind a history can be without the guidance of anepistemology.

One of the few historians of anthropology who has paid serious attentionto the problem of the beginnings of anthropology is F. Voget. He is wellaware of the fact that if we want to determine the beginnings we mustpossess certain discriminatory criteria. He proposes the four followingones:

&dquo;Exponents express a strong sense of difference from other disciplinesand seek to define and delimit a distinct area of investigation; whetherimplicit or explicit, special theory of reality is present and guidesexplanation; a distinctive methodology is used; special facts areaccumulated that contrast with those usually employed in sister .

disciplines’ (1967 p78).

I regret that the author does not elaborate the rationale for using thesecriteria. However, it appears that one can not talk about the ’foundation’of a discipline unless the four criteria are met; this raises the problemof whether Voget is presenting us with a generalizing epistemology whichwould account for all the beginnings of the different sciences. I see suchan epistemology as an unnecessary condition, since the epistemologicalweight of each criterion is very different. Indeed, I would like to seemuch more emphasis being given to the questions of the establishmentof the basic concepts of a discipline and of the internal norms for scientificactivity or ’proofs’; these elements, though implicit in Voget’s article,have to be spelled out since they are the only safeguard against a positivistepistemology which, as we have seen, tends to blur the differencesbetween the sciences.

In spite of these criticisms, Voget’s criteria easily permit us to dispose 19 .

of the Greeks and the Renaissance as possible beginnings of anthropology.In his more recent work, Voget (1975) has even briefly attempted toexamine certain obstacles which obstructed the appearance of anthropology _

in these two historical periods. Voget’s position on the problems of thebeginnings of anthropology has not changed from his early statement in .



35

which he credited the Enlightenment as the foundational moment andwondered why this period had been forgotten; as he put it: ’the nineteenth

century &dquo;science of man&dquo; was erected on a model quite like that proposedin the eighteenth century’ (1967 p79).

Although there has been a sustained interest in the Enlightenment amongthe social scientists which goes back at least as far as E. Durkheim, the

thinkers of this period have usually been considered, until relativelyrecently, as precursors of the social sciences and not as the true founders.In the last few years they have been salvaged from oblivion partly becauseof the evolutionist and Marxist revival. There are a number of reasons

why I consider that one should think of the Enlightenment as the periodin which the foundations of a science of man and society were laid:

1 The attempt to formulate laws of man and society. These laws wereseen in terms of cause and effect.

2 The idea that there were invariable laws of human nature and changinglaws of society.

3 The formulation of the concept of mode of production as a socialwhole consisting of a number of interrelated levels, the determininglevel being the economic.

4 The formulation of the idea that history can be best explained as asuccession of modes of production. The evolution from one stage toanother being triggered off by changes taking place at the economiclevel. 20

Related to the problem of the beginnings is the matter of the factors,internal or external, which contributed to the emergence of a science ofman and society (and later to the specific discipline called anthropology).The ulterior developments of the discipline, its theoretical and method-

ological as well as its institutional shifts, are also subjected to theinfluence of the internal and external factors. Again we are referringto a topic which seems of the utmost importance for any history ofanthropology and that has received inadequate and insufficient treatment.In many histories the matter does not even arise since we are given aplain succession of authors and their corresponding theories, plausiblywith the idea of establishing an acceptable pedigree, but not to query theproblems of intellectual filiation, or of how concepts evolve or the effectsof socio-economic, political, ideological and institutional matrices.

To my knowledge no attempt has been made at presenting a generalschema which would permit the detailed explanation of the origins anddevelopment of anthropology. Instead we can only refer to certain factorswhich have been mentioned by different authors. For example, C. Levi-Strauss has mentioned in a number of his writings the following factors:the cultural shock of the geographical discoveries, colonialism, theFrench Revolution, and Darwinian evolutionism (1960 p1966); M Harris(1968) refers to the Scientific Revolution as a crucial factor (and he isprobably right) and A. Gouldner (1973) talks about the influence ofRomanticism on nineteenth-century anthropology. I could certainly



36

mention other factors, some probably more specific and maybe even moreimportant, but the problem, of course, is that we don’t know the relative

weight of these factors for each historical period and for each part of thediscipline. In these circumstances there is the potential risk, often

actualised, of using one of these factors as deus ex machine when theexplanation can only be the result of multiple internal and externaldeterminations.

(3) The problem of theoretical externalism

There is one peculiar characteristic of the social sciences which I wouldlike very much to emphasize. I refer to it as ’theoretical externalism’and by this term I purport to describe the fact that since its beginnings,the social sciences have adopted a mimetic attitude with respect to thenatural sciences. This situation has not been without serious and negativetheoretical effects, the implications of which although adumbrated have .

not been fully spelled out. One of the consequences is that a history ofanthropology can not be written independently of a general history ofscientific thought. In other words, I maintain that in each historicalperiod the problematic of anthropology has tended to depend on an importedmodel of scientific practice. If we add that this borrowing has often beenmechanical and has ignored the specificity of anthropology, we can explainwhy what were intended as applications of the ’scientific method’ or ofsuccessful theories in other sciences, resulted in epistemological obstaclesfor anthropology.

It is my contention that a number of epistemological obstacles developedaround the social sciences. Over time this has resulted in the creation ofa resistent web of obstacles which make scientific progress difficult.Without wanting to be exhaustive I would like to mention a few of themwhich I think particularly relevant. I want to insist that these obstaclesare the result of what we could call certain scientistic fixations deeplyembedded in the social sciences.

One of the early obstacles could be referred to as mechanicism. It is theresult of applying the idea that phenomena can be explained totally onmechanical principles to the social sciences. It can be said to derivefrom the theories of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Underlying thisconception is an idea of causality which assumes an immediate relationof cause and effect; on the other hand, it only allows for the existence ofefficient but not final causes. A related obstacle can be designated asvulgar materialism. This conception suggests that the techno-economicelements of society determine all the others; that the latter are pure epi-phenomena. In a sense it is suggested that the existence of the techno-economic sphere is necessary and sufficient cause for the existence of .the other spheres. These two obstacles, along with a lineal and fixistinterpretation of evolution, have been often present in Marxists andevolutionists. As a result, the social whole has been usually conceived -

of, not as an articulation of different spheres with a causality which has .



37

to be deciphered (event accepting the determination in the last instance bythe economic), but as a whole in which the social, political, and ideo-logical elements are seen as a mere emanation from the techno-economicstructure.

Another obstacle which derives from a certain misunderstanding of Newtoncan be referred to as inductivism. The basic point of inductivism is thatwhat is scientific must be provable by reference to facts. This assumesthat theories must be deduced from facts and consequently denies the needfor a free conceptual construction in the development of theories. In

anthropology this obstacle has often been identified with the Radcliffe-Brownian prescription against conjectural history. In general, its effectshave been to bring theoretical work to a near standstill. In the area ofthe history of anthropology the result has been to exclude the Enlightenmentas the foundational moment of anthropology.

Empiricism is another of the obstacles which has prefaded anthropologyfrom the beginnings, specially in the Anglo-Saxon world. There are twodimensions that I would like to refer to briefly. Firstly, empiricismequates science with collection of facts; secondly, and more importantly,it contains an ontological assumption according to which universal orlaws are to be found at the empirical (behavioural) level. No distinctionis made between nature as sensed and nature as perceive by science.Both dimensions of empiricism are widely shared by anthropologistsand their deleterious effects have been duly substantiated in some recentstudies (Willer D and J 1973).

With the concept of theoretical externalism I have tried to point out, ina rather sketchy way, the situation of scientific dependency in which thesocial sciences have found and still find themselves today. This situationis not without important consequences. If it is true, as I believe it to bethe case and I have briefly shown, social scientists have systematicallymisrepresented the scientific practice and have not usually taken intoaccount the specificity of the social sciences.

Conclusion

In this paper I have attempted to show that a proper history of anthropologyis an endeavour which requires sophisticated skills which can only beacquired through familiarization with the history of the sciences.epistemology (particularly of the social sciences) and a detailed knowledgeof anthropological theories and methods of the present and the past. Ihave tried to show why anthropologists should care about the past of theirown discipline.

-

I hope that I have also been able to show the limitations of most of thecurrent histories of the discipline by suggesting, by means of crucialepistemological questions, areas and ways in which the future researchcould proceed.



38

Admittedly the breadth and the scope of my paper has only allowed me topresent the bare bones of my arguments, but this should be sufficientgiven the tentative and programmatic character of the paper.

NOTES

Acknowledgements

Between 1973 and 1975 I was financed by an SSRC research fellowship.The methodological framework presented in this paper is partly the resultof this research.

A number of ideas presented in this paper have been discussed with CarlosBidon-Chanal over the years, and I owe a lot to him. Of course, I assume

responsibility for their present formulation. Mary Douglas and Anne M.Bailey have made useful suggestions for the improvement of the text andhave done their best to clarify my English. I would also like to thank TalalAsad, Sally Humphries and Maurice Roche who kindly made a number ofimportant comments on this paper. However, I feel that I have not answeredthem satisfactorily.

The first part of the paper was presented on 23 April at a seminar in theDepartment of Anthropology of the London School of Economics. I want tothank the members of the seminar for their comments.

Last but not least I am grateful to my students at Sheffield University whostoically put up with a rough version of some of the ideas expressed in thispaper in the winter of early 1976.

1 See F. Voget (1975), specially chapter 14.2 It could be argued that atomization is a process common and necessary

to all sciences. Whether this is true or not for the natural sciences, the case is that the process of atomization has not helped to enhance thescientific character of the social and human sciences. In the course ofthis paper, I’ll try to show the negative effects that this process has hadupon these social and human sciences, although a complete demonstrationwould require a lengthier treatment.

3 One has only to peruse scientific journals in the natural sciences to notethe very contemporary nature of the debates and the scarce, if any,references to the even fairly recent past.

4 See R. K. Merton (1949), 1968 (enlarged edition) chapter one: ’On theHistory and Systematics of Sociological Theories’, pp1-38

5 Of course this excludes the ’oral traditions’ developed in different anthropology departments, a study of which would be necessary to fullyunderstand the question of how anthropologists have looked at theirpast.



9

6 A non-exhaustive list of books on the history or on historical aspectsof anthropology (excluding monographs on individual authors) wouldinclude the following: J. W. Burrow (1966), G. Gusdorf (1966, 1967,1969, 1971, 1972, 1973), P. Mercier (1966), J.O. Brew (1968), M. Harris(1968), G. W. Stocking (1968), E. Becker (1971), J. Lombard (1972),P. Bohannan and M. Glazer, eds. (1973), G. Broce (1973), E. Hatch (1973),A. Kuper (1973), R. Darnell (1973), A. Malefijt (1974), T. Thorensen, ed.

(1975), and F. Voget (1975). If we were to include articles the list wouldbe considerably longer. As we can see from the History of AnthropologyNewsletter, which began in 1973 in the USA, extensive research ispresently being carried out on the history of anthropology.

7 In a remarkable article characterising the anthropological traditionJ. Pouillon says: ’we choose what we say we are determined by, wepresent ourselves as the heirs of those we have made our predecessors’(1971 p78).

8 My survey takes into account the following books and articles listedin chronological order: F. Boas (1904), A. C. Haddon (1910), P. Radin

(1929), R. H. Lowie (1937), S. Tax (1937), E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1951),A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1958), D. F. Pocock (1961), P. Mercier (1966)and J. O. Brew (1968). The only exception to this long list is T. K.Penniman (1935) in which there is a somewhat confused half a pagededicated to Marx and Engels. A particularly interesting case isA. Kardiner and E. Preble (1961). In their book, promisingly entitledThey Studied Man, the authors assure us that their purpose is not tostudy the history of anthropology, but just the ’few great innovatorsin the development of a science of man’ (ibid p13); included are chapterson Darwin, Spencer, Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim, Boas, Malinowski,Kroeber, Benedict, and Freud ... but not even a word about Marx.

9 To the best of my knowledge the only recent British attempt at a historyof anthropology is that of A. Kuper (19’13) and it is limited to thedevelopments of British Social Anthropology from 1922 to 1972. Never-theless, the last chapter of the book seems to suggest that Kuper wouldconsider Marx as an ancestor, though maybe somewhat reluctantly.

10 Meyer does well to add that ’it is interesting to note the keen attentionwhich leading Marxists like Engels, Luxemburg, Plekhanov, Kautskyand others, followed the developments of modern anthropology’ (1954p157). One of the names that should be added to the list is that ofH. Cunow whose anthropological work, particularly on the Incas, hasonly recently been appreciated (Murra J, 1956).

11 See the pioneering work of M. Godelier (1970), but more particularlythe historiographical work of L. Krader (1972, 1975) on the ethnologicalnotebooks of Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production.

12 I should add that at present there are encouraging signs for the develop-ment of a proper history of anthropology, particularly in the work ofG. W. Stocking and a few others.

13 See T. S. Kuhn (1968).14 This expression refers to the work of G. Sarton (1952), A. Koyre

(1939, 1961), H. Butterfield (1949), G. Bachelard (1938), G. Canguilhem(1955,1968,1973), T. S. Kuhn (1962), M. Clagget (1959), R. K. Merton

(1938), and A. C. Crombie (1953) to mention only a few names.



40

15 What follows is a summary of this problematic. For a full treatmentsee the first part of An Epistemological History of the Concept of Modeof Production, my Ph. D thesis to be submitted to the University ofLondon.

16 Anthropologists looking at the past of their discipline seem to bereluctant to follow this precept. The treatment of L. H. Morgan is acase in point. He has been constantly praised for being a structural-functionalist avant la lettre, but victimised for having been an evolu-tionist (see among others M. Fortes, 1969). To my knowledge, therehas been no satisfactory attempt at understanding the work of Morganas a whole and in the context of his time.

17 A number of meanings have been attributed to the term historicism:(a) A philosophy that puts the main stress on history.(b) The belief that human ideas and ideals are subject to change

(Troeltsch).(c) A theory characterised by a belief in historical predictability and

determinism (Popper).(d) The idea that all history represents the interests and perspectives

of the present (Croce).(e) A linear view of time which assumes that the knowledge of history

is the self-consciousness of each present (Althusser).This list of definitions owes much to the article ’Historicism’ in the

Dictionary of the History of Ideas, New York, Scribner, 1973.18 Most anthropologists indulge in this vice; Levi-Strauss is probably the

person who carries it off with most elegance. See especially his treat-ment of Rousseau in C. Levi-Strauss (1973).

19 J. Rowe (1965) and M. Hodgen (1964), among others, have placed thebeginnings of anthropology in the Renaissance; D. Hymes, ed. (1974)has gone back as far as the Greeks.

20 This paragraph draws heavily upon R. Meek (1967, 1971). In mydoctoral thesis I treat this point in depth.

References

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Asad, T. (ed. ) (1973) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, London,Ithaca Press

Bachelard, G. (1938) La formation de l’esprit scientifique, Paris, Vrin;(1951) L’activite rationaliste de la physique contemporaine, Paris, PUF

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Critique of Anthropology 1976 Llobera