History of Anthropology

Classic work
• I have spent over 8 months in one village in the Trobriands and this proved to
me, how even a poor observer like myself can get a certain amount of reliable
information, if he puts himself into the proper conditions for observation.
— Bronislaw Malinowski (letter to A.C.
Haddon, May 1916)
History
• As a science, anthropology is claimed to have its roots in four western countries,
namely; France, Britain, Germany and the United States of America. It is basically
claimed to have its first roots in the ancient Greeks.
• a.Greek traveller’s tales: Herodotus of Halicarnassus (South West Coast of Turkey
484-425)
• Herodotus wrote narratives of western Asia and Egypt (based on second hand
information). He was mainly concerned with how we should relate to “others”. This
was clearly depicted in his writings which were basically descriptions of language,
dress, political and judicial institutions, crafts and economics.
European colonial expansion

• The birth of anthropology as a discipline is seen later when scholars took up the
study of human cultures and biological diversity.
• C. Darwinian Influences
• In a quest to understand the history of human beings, historian Charles Darwin
(1859) through archaeological research came up with a theory of evolution. In his
theory, Darwin posited that human species develop through a process of natural
selection where the fittest survive. Darwin suggested that the less successful species
were displaced and replaced by more successful ones that adapted well to the
environment
Enlightenment
• The enlightenment was a period of profound intellectual development beginning at
the end of the English revolution carrying through to the beginning of the French
revolution (Ritzer 1996).
• It was a period characterized by efforts to find solutions to the problems of society
through reason.
• It is a child of the Enlightenment and bears throughout its history and today many of
the characteristic features of its ancestry.
Bronsilow Malinowski (1884-1942) - Background
• Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski was born on April 7, 1884, in Cracow, Poland.
• In 1908 he took his Ph.D. at the university there in physics and mathematics.
• During a period of illness he became interested in anthropology by reading
Frazer's Golden Bough,
• In 1910 he went to England to study with C. G. Seligman at the London School
of Economics. His major contributions are theoretical and methodological
Functionalism
• Bronsilow Malinowski is regarded as the founding father of functionalism in
anthropology.
• Malinowski’s theory of functionalism was drawn from his ground breaking
ethnographic fieldwork among the Trobrianders of the Trobriand Islands of the South
of New Guinea
Malinowski Functionalism
• James Peoples and Garrick Bailey (2012: 78) defines functionalism as a
Theoretical orientation that analyses cultural elements in terms of their
useful effects to individuals or to the persistence of the whole society
• cultural features should be explained mainly by their useful functions to the
people and to the society—that is, by the benefits they confer on individuals
and groups
• To Malinowski, the main purpose of culture is to serve human biological,
psychological, and social needs.
Malinowski key argument
• ethnographic concerns were with how culture met the needs of the
individual. Inborn needs of human beings are the driving force for the
development of institutions and his brand of functionalism is also referred to
as ‘biopsychological functionalism’
• The key argument in Malinowski’s functionalism is that human beings cannot
achieve their basic daily needs (such as eating, drinking and reproducing)
alone.
• Individuals have to conform to cultural rules which mediate the process of
meeting these needs.
• This leads to the formation of institutions responsible for the organizing and
regulation of such activities.
• an important function of culture is to help people meet their “needs.”
Contextual analysis

• Malinowski also used his culture theory to protest against the study of
isolated cultural traits in order to establish connections between one area
and another.
• Objects were not to be studied in vacuo but against the setting of the whole
culture in which they were found.
• The stick was not to be relegated to the museum, but to be studied in use as
a digging stick, a ceremonial stick, a walking stick, a sceptre or a wand.
Prolonged fieldwork
• Malinowski made three expeditions in all to New Guinea. The first, September 1914-
March 1915, was suggested by Seligman, spent mainly among the Mailu of Toulon
Island, a West Papuo-Melanesian group.
• He returned to Australia and went to the Trobriands in June 1915 and remained
there until May 1916. Another visit to the Trobriands lasted from October 1917 to
October 1918.
• Malinowski spent years with native Trobrianders, learning their language, their
patterns of thought, and their cultural ways. (ethnography)
• He developed a form of ethnography centered on empathic understandings of native
lifeways and on analyzing culture by describing social institutions and showing the
cultural and psychological functions they performed
Methodological Imprint
• His recognition of his duty as an anthropologist to document as fully as possible the
empirical basis for the sociological principles he formulated;
• his desire to gain an insight into human motives and values.
• For him, the final goal of the ethnographer was 'to grasp the native's point of view,
his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.
• We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that
is, the hold which life has on him. . . .
• Perhaps through realizing human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we
shall have some light shed on our own' (1922a, p. 25).
Empathetic understanding
• In an era when non-Europeans were often considered incomprehensible and
illogical, Malinowski forcefully promoted the idea that native cultural ways
were logical
• For example, in a famous essay on science and magic, he argued that natives
used magic only for goals they were unable to attain by more rational means
(such as controlling the weather) (Malinowski 1948).
Types of ethnographers
• Citizen/ native – Indigenous
• Foreign
• Emic and Etic approaches
Critique
• functionalist theory is incapable of explaining change
• functionalism that it is ‘ahistorical’, lacking a sense of history.
• Gluckman (Bib. ii, 1949, pp. 2-5) and later Evans-Pritchard (1951a,
p. 58) evidently consider that an anti-historical bias is an essential
part of Malinowski's type of functionalism.
• Gluckman suggests that he opposed scientific historical work as
well as unscientific; but in fact his earliest protests were merely
against a conjectural history 'invented adhoc in order to account
for actual and observable fact, in which therefore the known and
the empirical is explained by the imaginary and the unknowable'
(Malinowski, 1926a, p. 132),
Structural functionalism-Radcliffe Brown (1881-
1955).
• He was an admirer of Emile Durkheim a sociologist.
• Although Radcliffe Brown initially agreed with Malinowski’s functionalist
approach, he later modified it during the mid 1930’s.
• Radcliffe-Brown, moved in a somewhat different direction.
• Using a comparative approach, he tried to develop typologies to sort and
categorize different kinds of societies (1952)
RB- Fieldwork
• Radcliffe-Brown did relatively little fieldwork himself, but aimed at the
development of a ‘natural science of society’ –where the universal laws of
social integration could be formulated.
• Radcliffe-Brown’s scientific ideals were taken from natural science, and he
hoped to develop ‘general laws of society’ comparable in precision to those of
physics and chemistry.
• His theory, known as structural-functionalism, saw the acting individual as
theoretically unimportant, emphasising instead the social institutions
(including kinship, norms, politics, etc.)
Radcliffe Brown
• Radcliffe Brown, believed that function can only be meaningful when viewed
under structure.
• For him, the social structure is a sophisticated network of social relations of
actors within institutionalized roles, (Radcliffe Brown 1950: 190 in Cheater
1986).
• He was concerned with the “anatomy” of societies, with social structure, which he
defined as “this network of actually existing social relationships” (1952: 190).
Radcliffe-Brown
• Most social and cultural phenomena, according to this view, could be seen as
functional in the sense that they contributed to the maintenance of the
overall social structure
• To Radcliffe-Brown the function of a part of the social structure, such as a
clan, meant the contribution made by the clan to the ongoing life processes
of the society.
RB
• Unlike Malinowski, Radcliffe was mainly concerned with relationship.
• His view was that the most tangible social and cultural phenomenon could be
seen as functional in the sense that they contributed to the maintenance of
the overall structure
• he shows how societies are integrated, and how social institutions reinforce
each other and contribute to the maintenance of society
Structural functionalism
• Structure comprises of the invisible relationships which produce
behaviour a visible outcome reflected on society’s surface
• During his studies of the Andamese he discovered that social
relationships are functional in that they contribute to social
integration and therefore maintenance of social structure.
Rejected history
• He strongly opposed what he referred to as “conjectural history,”
(speculative) which had been characteristic of evolutionary theory.
• Real history, he argued, existed only where there were written records kept
by the people themselves.
• Unfortunately, the effect of Radcliffe-Brown’s position was to inhibit all kinds
of historical research by British anthropologists for one or two generations.
RB and Malinowski
• Neither Radcliffe-Brown nor Malinowski bequeathed to social anthropology a
theory of change, being more concerned to understand how non-western
societies fitted into their own present than to predict the future.
• However, one should note that—contrary to some views—neither was an
apologist for colonialism
• Both distanced themselves from the wide-ranging claims of diffusionism and
evolutionism
REACTIONS TO STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONALISM
• In Britain and the colonies, the structural-functionalism now associated
chiefly with Evans-Pritchard and Fortes was under increased pressure after
the war.
• Indeed, Evans-Pritchard himself repudiated his former views in the 1950s,
arguing that the search for ‘natural laws of society’ had been shown to be
futile and that anthropology should fashion itself as a humanities discipline
rather than a natural science
Critique
• The individual is no longer seen merely as the average bearer of a particular
culture, or the structurally determined and properly socialised role
incumbent. He or she is the rebel, innovator, deviant, above all the thinking
manipulator of people and customs, always with an eye to his or her
advantage.
• This advantage may be long- or short-term, economic, social, political or even
religious.
• Resonates with Malinowskian rather than Durkheimian conceptualisation of
an individual
Marxist Anthropology
• Marxism is essentially an economic interpretation of history based primarily on the
works of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Marx was a revolutionary who focused his
efforts on understanding capitalism to overthrow it.
• Marx, was largely materialist and historicist, framed his analysis around four central
points: the physical reality of people, the organization of social relations, the value of
the historical context of development, and the human nature of continuous praxis.
• Orthodox Marxism - Primitive communism – feudalism – capitalism – socialism –
communism
• Class struggles is a prime mover
Key Concepts
• Base and Superstructure—The base consists of the forces and relations of power that
are influential to the community. The superstructure is the political, economic, and
legal organization of the structure. Standing beside this superstructure is the
ideological structure. This system is often cited as a flaw in Marxism and seen as a
kind of political economy determinism.
• Labor—This is productive labor, that work which is needed to sustain production and
go beyond the level of the immediate producer. Labor is the sum of the work of the
individual through the means of labor and the subject of labor. Labor disappears in
the product, as the result is the value
Key concepts
• Means of Production— The means of production include both the technology or tools with which
production is being completed (means of labor) and the raw materials that are being transformed
during production (subject of labor).
• Forces of Production— The things we use to produce what we need, including the means of production
and labor (including both physical and mental capacities). Meaning this is the combination of the power
of labor, the technology of tools used, and the raw materials being converted.
• Relations of Production— The relationships that individuals are forced to develop to survive within a
capitalist driven system and to produce and reproduce their means. These relationships vary between
the individuals of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Control of the relations of production comes from
ownership of the means of production. They also exist between the individual and the forces of their
economic connections (i.e., the connection of the bourgeoisie to capital).
• Cheater ( ) notes that the basic problem with orthodox Marxism, when applied to
non-industrial societies, is its assumption that economic relationships (the ‘relations
of production’) have an influencing or conditioning effect on all other relations in
society.
• In societies where preindustrial production outstrips consumption requirements by
only small margins, and where currencies and markets are poorly developed and
affect only a small part of people’s total lives, this assumption often cannot be
sustained.
• Many societies, especially but not exclusively in Africa, were and sometimes still are
organised not around economic relationships, but on the basis of kinship and
marriage
Marxist Anthropology
• Marxist anthropology has provided anthropology with a powerful alternative
to the functionalist notion that inequality is necessary in order that society be
integrated on the basis of complementarity.
• i.e. notion that social and political inequalities arise from differential control
over the means of production
Feminist Anthropology
• The subfield of Feminist Anthropology emerged as a reaction to a perceived
androcentric bias within the discipline (Lamphere 1996: 488).
• Two related points should be made concerning this reaction. First of all, some of the
prominent figures in early American anthropology (e.g. Margaret Mead and Ruth
Benedict) were women, and the discipline has traditionally been more egalitarian, in
terms of gender, than other social sciences (di Leonardo 1991: 5-6).
• Underlying that statement, however, is the fact that the discipline has been subject
to prevailing modes of thought through time and has certainly exhibited the kind of
androcentric thinking that early feminist anthropologists accused it of (Reiter 1975:
13-14).
Androcentricism
• Nanda & Warms (2012) note that Feminists discovered that the presence of
some very high-profile women within anthropology did little to counteract
the fact that the overwhelming majority of anthropologists were men and
that their areas of interest tended to focus on the social roles, activities, and
beliefs of men in the societies they studied
• There were several reasons why anthropologists had focused on men
Possible reasons
• First, in many societies, men and women live quite segregated lives. Because they
were men, most anthropologists had little access to the lives of women.
• Second, anthropologists tended to assume that men’s activities were political and
therefore important, whereas women’s activities were domestic and therefore of less
importance.
• Third, in most societies, men’s activities were far more public than women’s
activities. Anthropologists tended to assume that what was public and visible was
more important than what was more behind the scenes and less visible. However,
this clearly is not always (or even often) the case.
Systematic Bias
• The result of taking men more seriously than women was a systematic bias in
anthropological data and understandings.
• Anthropologists had often reported with great detail and accuracy about
men’s social and cultural worlds, but they had barely scratched the surface of
women’s worlds.
• Furthermore, the assumption that men spoke for all of society that is
frequently implicit in ethnographies often made cultures appear more
harmonious and homogeneous than they actually were.
3 Waves of feminism in anthropology
• First Wave 1850-1920
• The first wave, from 1850 to 1920, sought primarily to include women’s
voices in ethnography.
• What little ethnographic data concerning women that existed was often, in
reality, the reports of male informants transmitted through male
ethnographers (Pine 1996: 253)
2 Wave 1920-1980
nd

• The second wave, from 1920 to 1980, moved into academic spheres and separated
the notion of sex from that of gender, both of which previously had been used
interchangeably.
• Gender was used to refer to both the male and the female, the cultural construction
of these categories, and the relationship between them (Pine 1996:253).
• The definition of gender may vary from culture to culture, and this realization has led
feminist anthropologists away from broad generalizations (Lamphere 1996:488). In
addition, second wave feminist anthropologists rejected the idea of inherent
dichotomies such as male/female and work/home.
3 Wave Feminism 1980s +
rd

• Contemporary feminist anthropologists constitute the theory’s third wave, which

began in the 1980s.
• Feminist anthropologists no longer focus solely on the issue of gender asymmetry, as
this leads to neglect in fields of anthropology such as archaeology and physical
anthropology (Geller and Stockett, 2006).
• Instead, feminist anthropologists now acknowledge differences through categories
such as class, race, ethnicity, and so forth.
• The focus of contemporary scholars in third wave feminist anthropology is the
differences existing among women rather than between males and females (McGee,
Warms 1996: 392).
• However, this also encourages considerations of what categories such as age,
occupation, religion, status, and so on mean and how they interact, moving
away from the issue of male and female.
• Power is a critical component of feminist anthropology analysis, since it
constructs and is constructed by identity.
• Studies include those that focus on production and work, reproduction and
sexuality, and gender and the state (Lamphere 1997; Morgen 1989)