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The History of Anthropology as a Problem

Josep R Llobera Critique of Anthropology 1976 2: 17 DOI: 10.1177/0308275X7600200703 The online version of this article can be found at: http://coa.sagepub.com/content/2/7/17

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The

History of Anthropology
R Llobera

as a

Problem

by Josep

Introduction

The process of historical differentiation which anthropology has undergone since the Second World War has resulted in the emergence of a plethora of specializations within our discipline. We now have political anthropology, cognitive anthropology, economic anthropology, urban anthropology and 1 These many others. specialities - and there seems to be no end to this process of fission - have been progressively accepted by the professions and are being taught in most universities, both in Great Britain and in the United States.

Even mo re striking is the fact that anthropologists are encouraged to take an early specialization, often starting with their doctoral research. It has been suggested that these specializations require of the anthropologist 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 the economist than with the political anthropologist, for instance. On the other hand, if it is still true that the main concern of anthropology is with primitive societies, it is also the case that, for a number of well known reasons (J R Llobera 1974), more and more research is being undertaken 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 potentially integrative of anthropology, are surprisingly played down. I am referring here to anthropological theory and history of anthropology (and I should also add epistemology of the social sciences). It is true that anthropological theory is sometimes encouraged, but always subordinated to the main purpose of anthropology, to what since Boas and Malinowski has been distinctive of our discipline: fieldwork.
This situation is highly irregular if compared with other disciplines, for instance, physics or biology, where the theoretical and experimental sides are well differentiated, and where the histories of these disciplines are usually written by specialists. The case of anthropology is totally different. Ideally, the practitioner of our discipline is conceived of as a sort of belated Renaissance person. In the good old days, she or he, during the active years, was supposed to account for the whole culture of 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 be time for writing a history of the discipline.

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Times have changed and anthropologists are not expected to study a whole culture, 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 close to his or her academic career with another partial and often unfinished history of anthropology. The increasing process of atomization2 that the discipline has suffered over the last thirty years, reflected not only in thematic, but also in geographical specialization, is something that anthropology can not afford any longer. We are reaching a point where communication is no longer possible and where masses of often irrelevant detail tend (as someone put it in the context of historical research) to hide a lack of insight and the absence of all power to interpret (Kaufmann W 1960: v). In a recent interview, C. Levi-Strauss has expressed the need for the separation between theoreticians and fieldworkers to solve this problem, if only because in the last fifty years such an enormous mass of data has been collected that there should be some people dedicated to putting some order in it and to the interpretation of these facts (Levi-Strauss C 1974 p26). Without accepting the implicit empiricism of this statement, we can still agree that its time for the spinners to make way for the weavers. there is hardly any need to add that behind this way of thinking lies the idea that the skills required for theoretical work can neither be improvised nor spontaneously develop out of the field experience. This, of course, stands in direct opposition to what our naive empiricists and inductivists seem to believe. I strongly maintain that theoretical skills can only be developed by special training and dedication which are hardly compatible with extended fieldwork.

Indeed,

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

Having established these initial points, I would like to discuss two questions which might easily arise, and that unless dealt with properly, could become serious objections to the position I maintain. First, why should we bother at all with the history of anthropology? and second, what is wrong with the standard way of writing histories of anthropology?

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It is not my intention to plead for the relevance of the history of the sciences in general in the university curricula, since others have done it 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 the social sciences in general, it is not only a question of displaying the different historical moments of their scientific rationality in the corresponding social matrix, but also a matter of showing their direct relevance for current social theory. As we shall see later, this point fully justifies my stand that the history of anthropology should not be left only to antiquarians or specialized historians (if they ever appear). I mean that it should also be practised by people trained mainly in anthropology, in the current theories and the problems of the discipline.
It is often said, following A. N. Whitehead (1925) that a science which does not forget its founders is lost. This is certainly the reason put forward by many anthropologists to play down the history of the discipline. It is alleged that we dont run the risk of getting lost provided we keep developing our theoretical corpus by means of setting hypotheses and subsequently testing them in the field. But is this really the way things happen? Arent we behaving like those practical men referred to by J. M. Keynes who think that they are quite exempt from any intellectual influences but who are in fact slaves of some defunct theoretician?

The recent crisis of identity and confidence of anthropology (which is still very much with us) has shown, if anything, that whether for good or for worse we still depend on the theories of the past. How can we otherwise explain the return to evolutionism, to Durkheim, Weber, Marx and 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 our ancestors.
&dquo;-

As

in the second part of this paper, a proper history of we anthropology ought to be able to account for this peculiar characteristic of anthropology (and of the social sciences in general). Provisionally, we can say that the reason is that scientificity i. e. the scientific status of anthropology is in suspense and this is why history and theory fuse at 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 between theory and history; it seems as if there was a wide consensus then on what anthropology was - its theories and methods, its scope and aims. This period is over. Anthropology is now a battleground for competing theories which want to establish supremacy. The struggle is just shall
see

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

In

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scientific
a

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

there is

The Kuhnian model tries to explain this transitional stage in the natural sciences (Kuhn T S 1962), but what is specific to the social sciences is the form 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 a
case

in

point.

It is clear, then, that a history of anthropology has direct relevance for the understanding of the theoretical state of the discipline today. Only a proper history of anthropology can bring to the forefront the progressive or regressive character of the different research programs in which anthropologists have been involved over the years. The second question that I wanted to tackle involves a critique of the way in 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. Lowies The History of Ethnological Theory had hardly any competitor as a text in the field of the history of anthropology for nearly thirty years. Ten years later the panorama is somewhat different. There has been a proliferation of histories of anthropology, some general (the so-called from the beginnings to the present 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 of these texts have as their sole objective to present an acceptable genealogy of the discipline as seen from the perspective of a particular practitioner
or

school.
a

certain sense what is at stake in these histories is a particular way seeing the past of the discipline. The authors of these histories are defending what they believe to be the anthropological tradition; they see themselves as the custodians of this tradition. In fact, whether conscious of it or not, they are providing the discipline with an acceptable line of ancestors. 7

In of

Experience has familiarized anthropologists with the fact that genealogies dont always reflect actual connections. They can be and often are manipulated by the natives to suit different interests. This fact has been widely acknowledged, so much so that, in the article Genealogy of a social sciences distionary, J. Middleton writes that: It is now generally understood that genealogies are not always historically accurate statements, but may be changed in order to provide support for, and validation of, actual present day relationships between persons who feature in them (Gould J and Kolb

W L 1964 p282).

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A
or

case

study of what I have been saying about re-writing genealogies adapting intellectual filiations to the heat of the moment is the place

of Karl Marx in the histories of anthropology. I have chosen Marx because I happen to be engaged in research on the connections between Marx and anthropology. It is not my intention to enter into the polemics of how relevant he might be for past or modern anthropology, but rather to try to explain the shifts that have recently occurred in the assessments of Marx. The main point I am trying to make could be demonstrated with respect to many authors and historical periods, because, as D Hymes has recently put it, we have no adequate history of anthropology and no account of anthropologists consciousness of their history, but individual anthropologists have many diverse reasons for tracing individual 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, its not so much to explain why Marx was excluded from most histories of anthropology up
to the appearance of M. Harris The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), but to account for his inclusion in recent histories. It is a fact that neither Marxs theories nor even his name ever appeared in any of the histories of anthropology prior to 1968. 8 To my understanding there 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 identification of Marxs theories with those of a minor evolutionist not worth referring to. 3 The anti-socialist and anti-soviet standpoint of Western anthropology.
a number of anthropologists (mainly American) writing histories of the discipline have thought it necessary or opportune to refer more or less extensively to Marx and to Marxist approaches in general as part of anthropology. 9 Among the recent histories I would like to include, besides Harris, are a rather unknown book by E. Becker (1971) and two very recent general histories: A. Malefijt (1974) and F. Voget (1975). Finally, I would also like to refer to the article Anthropology in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1974). Although not strictly historical, Dell Hymes Introduction (Hymes D ed. 1974) is also interesting. These recent inclusions of Marx are somewhat surprising and undoubtedly represent a radical veer with respect to previous histories of the discipline where, as we have seen, the name of Marx was hardly ever mentioned.

However,

in recent years

engaged

in

Lets start with M. Harris (1968). In this book we have a history of anthropology in which, considering the then current perspective of anthropology, 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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pre-1968 histories of the discipline were written under the implicit explicit assumption that cultural anthropology (...) developed entirely independently from Marxism (Meyer A 1954 p22). 10 Harris thesis is that anthropology developed entirely in reaction to, instead of independently
Our
or

of, Marxism (1968 p249). Of course, it was Harris use of a cultural materialist strategy as a heuristic principle that brought the theories of Marx 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 as he had anticipated his cultural materialism, but he would relentlessly criticize Marx for having shackled cultural materialism to the spooks of Hegels dialectic (1968 p5).
was written at a time when the evolutionist revival, with its and nomothetic drives, was on the offensive for the first time and it was crucial for the movement to establish an illustrious ancestry. The appearance of so-called French Marxist Anthropology in the late sixties was of course another factor of the greatest importance in explaining the acceptance of Marx as an intellectual ancestor in most histories of the discipline. Of course, these later publications did not affect Harris book. One should also be aware that the increasing interest in Marx shown by anthropologists in the late sixties and after, is part of a wider and rather complex phenomenon which has affected the whole of the social sciences.

Harris book

generalizing

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

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

In

Malefijts book (1974) there is a contradiction of a different kind, nonetheless related to the problem just mentioned. On the one hand, the author

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23

tells us that Marx and Engels elevated social studies to the rank of science (1974 p108), but on the other hand, we dont see this statement fully justified in the text, particularly since we are told that Marxs own speculation was that all social activities were ultimately reducible to economic motivations and processes (1974 p107).
In his monumental history (1975) F. Voget was indeed faced with the same problem: what to do with the skeleton that he had suddenly found in the cupboard. He could not hail Marx as the Darwin of the social sciences as Harris had done, but he agreed that Marx should be accorded a place in the history of anthropology because he opened up new territory in the analysis of societal evolution based on conflict and social adaptation (1975 p162). Of course, he is aware that anthropologists have ignored Marx for nearly a century, but he is not prepared to dig deeply into the causes of this fact. He is quite happy with positing the irrelevance of Marxism for primitive societies; the recent revival of Marxism then has to be attributed to the changes taking place in primitive societies, 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 both economics and sociology have also ignored Marxism over the same period

of time.
I should like to close this panorama of histories of anthropology with a at E. Beckers 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 prominent features will be dealt with (contrary to most historians where the infatuation with details often hides the main lines of development). Secondly, a critical history can only be meaningful from a certain epistemological stand openly assumed; in Beckers case his conviction is that the science of man got lost somewhere on the way and that criticism is the only way out of scientific dead ends (1971:ix).

quick look

Beckers approach is normative; his main vision is to recover what he thinks is the now stranded single vision that the science of man had in the 18th century. This vision includes three angles: 1 - the central problem of the science of man: how do we explain human differences? 2 - the large historical panorama of human development, which provides the background for this explanation, 3 - the superordinate value scale for judging the wisdom and adequacy of mans social arrangements (1971 p108). From these premises it would come as no surprise that the Rousseau-Marx tradition plays such a prominent role in Beckers Sketch. For me, the case study of the place of Marx in the history of anthropology has the value of a symptomatic example. A.s I have said before, it would be easy to illustrate my point with other examples. The important thing is that it reveals that the practice of writing histories of a discipline is not 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 second part of this paper, the state of the history of our discipline is in such a preliminary stage? How can we assess the place of Marx in the history of if the picture of Marx, the anthropologist has only started to emerge? 1 On the other hand, how can one write more or less general histories when we lack the basic monographs on authors, historical periods, conceptual developments etc?

anthropology

In conclusion, it is apparent that the role of the true historian of anthropology is not unlike the anthropologist in the field. Both collect genealogies and both know that these genealogies cannot be taken at face value. As ideologies that they are, these genealogies are not intended to explain history but to justify the structure of the present.

hope I have established, admittedly in a rather tentative way, (a) the importance 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 summary of the problematic of the history of the sciences - my point of view, which emerges from an ongoing criticism of the state of the art. This criticism, of course, is only possible from the vantage point of a certain epistemological conception. However, I want to emphasize the fact that the general scheme 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 ways of 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 originates within the framework of the history of the natural sciences, also has some validity 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 development of the history of the sciences that occurred in the years after the Second World War. At present, one can say that its influence goes well beyond strictly disciplinary boundaries and in a way has become - at least in 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 the history of the sciences. Of course, there have always been histories of scientific discoveries which described, usually in a very detailed way, the empirical events that made possible the progress of knowledge from ignorance to truth. These histories are usually accompanied by heroic

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biographies

of scientists and even spicy chronicles. Indeed, very eminent scientists wrote histories of their own disciplines. But these histories were normally the by-product of their scientific activities or had strictly pedagogical ends. These histories, which Ill refer to as traditional, had a very limited range of problems, since their main objective was to classify, in a rather manichean way, the scientists of the past into good or bad according to whether or to what extent they had anticipated the present state of the discipline.

The new historiography of the emerged in the intersticial space between history, epistemology, and the sciences. It is by no means uniform in its theoretical approach, but I think that there is an underlying problematic, in the sense used by L. Althusser of a total and autonomous intellectual structure, which can be expressed in two pairs of oppositions: internalism versus externalism and continuism versus discontinuism. These two pairs of oppositions define by inclusion or exclusion certain areas and ways of doing research into the history of 5 the sciences. 15
The opposition between internalism and externalism refers to the focus of the research. In order to explain scientific development the internalist concentrates almost exclusively on the scientific works (theoretical and experimental problems as defined by a scientific community), while the externalist also considers other influences, such as technological, socio-economic, institutional, political, and ideological factors. For the former, the interaction of scientific ideas (or in a wider sense, the intellectual interaction) suffices to explain the dynamics of science, while for the latter other conditions - external to science - are. required.

sciencesl4

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

fundamentally an intellectual revolution; for the externalists its origins had to be sought elsewhere: in the development of capitalism. This opposition was subsequently generalized to include not only the appearance of modern science, but also to explain its steady growth in the following centuries 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 being settled, in spite of statements from both sides that they have won the war, and it will probably rage for a long time. Unfortunately the rules of the game are not yet clearly defined. There is neither firm agreement on the meaning of such terms as pure science, applied science and technology (though most internalists tend to equate science to pure
nor is there a clear delineation of the range and scope of the external factors. What are these factors supposed to influence? The cognitive aspect of science, its origins, its developments, its shifts? And is their influence equal for all times and cultures or does it vary from one society to another?

science),

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The opposition between continuism and discontinuism refers to the vexed question of whether there is a continuous development of knowledge from
common sense to scientific knowledge. The continuist states that progress and historical change take place step by step, gradually, and that scientists are greatly indebted to theii predecessors. The discontinuist sees knowledge as being subverted, as changing from one period to another. For the continuist, science has always existed, albeit in rudimentary forms. Ideally, the discontinuist sees science (and sometimes each science in particular) as an epistemological eruption which emerges in a particular historical period.

Some continuists conceive of scientific progress as a process of indiscriminate accumulation, others prefer to look at it as a process of selective accumulation. All use the idea of precursors; this is based on the principle that to every thinker one can find a list of forerunners who show different degrees of intellectual kinship, as a technique to facilitate the transition from one period to another, thus contributing to the idea that there are no revolutions or abrupt changes in science. The discontinuists think that scientific progress takes place by abrupt and sudden leaps forward which subvert the ancient order. They talk about scientific revolutions. For example, they believe that modern science, the one originating in the 16th and 17th centuries, represents a radical change, a discontinuity, with respect to medieval science. Discontinuists often concern themselves with the problem of the beginnings of science, be it the beginnings of science in general which they place in a particular historical period (Mesopotamia, Greece, Western Europe) or with the beginnings of each specific science. the discontinuists reject the idea of precursors, but they accept that scientific ideas which were born in one individual can be developed and brought to completion by another. Their main complaint is against the assumption that theories, concepts, experiments and the like can belong to different historical periods and can be easily transferred from one intellectual space to another. This activity, which may be condoned in the practising scientist who, for pedagogical reasons or with the purpose of enlisting some scientific authority of the past, is trying to trace the filiation of his theories to a forerunner, is inexcusable for the proper historian in so far as his attitude represents a distortion of the past in a way that makes it practically unintelligible.

Obviously

As a result of the polemic between continuists and discontinuists a number of areas of research have been delineated. Three of them seem to me of the greatest interest: the emergence of two different types of history, the question of the beginnings of science, and the relations between history of science and epistemology. The first effect of the dispute between continuists and discontinuists has made 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 are classified as correct or incorrect according to whether they do or do not conform with the current practice of science. This attitude has been referred to by H. Butterfield as the Whig interpretation of history; it informs the typical history of scientists, historians, inductivists, and positivists. Its only concern is to show the triumphant progress of science from the beginnings up to the present, always looking at past achievements from the standpoint of the scientific attitudes of today.
There is another kind of history which looks at the past in a different way; it does not look only at the concepts confirmed by the scientific practice of today, but also at those that have been abandoned. It works under the assumption that what now has been abandoned and excluded was once held to be true and might have been considered indissociable from what we still consider to be true today. In other words, it tries to understand the work of the scientists of the past as a whole and not as a mixture of scientific and non-scientific theories. 16 This kind of history is an effort to investigate and try to understand to what extent superseded notions, attitudes, or methods were in their time in advance, and consequently how the superseded past remains the past of an activity for which we 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) talks about presentism and historicism respectively, but I would prefer to avoid the term historicism altogether since it has so many different connotations. 17 A similar, but by no means equal classification is the one put forward by G. Bachelard (1951). He distinguishes between sanctioned history (histoire sanctionee) and outdated history (histoire perimee); the former is a history of thoughts which have been confirmed by contemporary science, the latter is a history of thoughts which do not 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 not believe in linear, but dialectical progress - progress that takes place by sudden abrupt mutations. Of course, the proper historian has to pay attention to both histories. The second area of crucial interest that has developed around the controversies between continuists and discontinuists has to do with the question of 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 it is time-consuming for philosophers of science and social scientists. A number of answers have been given to these two questions. As a matter of fact, answers can only be provided - short of adopting the diffuse attitude of the extreme continuists - by accepting an epistemological

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intervention of one kind or another. The whole issue can thus only be tackled if one is aware of the different epistemological issues that exist. For a positivist, for example, the crucial element which defines the beginnings of science is methodological: the imposition of certain standards of observation and experience; the empiricist sees the primordial feature in the collection of facts; others prefer to talk about the delineation and definition of an object; finally, the rational materialists insist that the definition of a science is its history - the history of the real conditions of production of its concepts (the formation of the concepts and theories) and see each science as constituting itself by breaking away from a previous

ideology.
The third area of interest refers to the relation between history of science and epistemology. It is clear from what has been said up to now that it is neither possible nor desirable to keep history of science and epistemology separate. We can say with Lakatos that epistemology without history is empty and that history without epistemology is blind, but otherwise they should not be confused. There is always the danger, in a pure sanctioned type of history, of reducing history to epistemology, while the other extreme would be to reduce history to a pure narration of events without any evaluation.

epistemology it can either mean the universalizing project of the philosophy of the sciences or a certain normative stand which claims to draw its judgements from a continuous and up to date contact with each science and in consequence is bound to be provisional and changing.
As to Some crucial issues in the

history

of

anthropology

The general scheme that I have presented delineates in its very broad lines the quintessence of the current problematic of the history of the sciences. It is my intention now to examine the suitability of this scheme for the history 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 the social sciences (1968 p77). Kuhn does not mention the question of whether he thinks that the tools developed to deal with the fully-fledged sciences can also be applied to the social sciences, the scientificity of which is in suspense or uncertain to say the least. It is true that in the last chapter of Kuhns famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), a reference is made to the pre-paradigmatic stage in which the social sciences are found. In spite of this cautionary reference, the social scientists have uncritically ransacked Kuhns theories and made very indiscriminate and biassed use of the concept of paradigm.
In what follows I propose to examine three issues which I consider crucial and preliminary to any attempt to write a proper history of anthropology; I believe that until now these issues have not received appropriate, if any,

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attention. Ill refer to them respectively as the problem of the epistemic status of anthropology (i. e. the reliability of its knowledge), the problem of the beginnings of anthropology and the problem of theoretical externalism.

(1)

The

problem of the epistemic status of anthropology

Unless it is willing to start on the wrong footing, a history of anthropology can not avoid a consideration of the epistemic status of the discipline. This, of course, requires the use of certain criteria to separate science from non-science, unless one is prepared to accept that there is nothing specific and differential that can be called scientific knowledge. But if scientific knowledge, as I firmly endorse, is different from religious, magical and other forms of knowledge, it is crucial that we provide the criteria for this distinction. A number of criteria are available (verifiability, falsifiability, logical consistency etc) which have been put forward by philosophers of science. As is well known, most of these criteria, if applied rigorously, come up with the result that the social sciences, anthropology included, dont stand up to the standards of scientificity (Boudon R 1968). But against the imperialist philosophies of science which impose abstract criteria resulting from experience at best limited to the natural sciences, it is always possible to demand specific criteria for the social sciences. It is unfortunate that for the most part the epistemological studies on the social sciences fail to recognize this specificity and rely heavily upon the natural scientific model.

It is true that in the social sciences there has always been a significant, though minoritarian, trend (exemplified today by the phenomonological and Frankfurt schools among others) against blindly following the natural scientific model, but this trend has often taken an anti-scientific bias altogether, thus throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
One of the things that social scientists of one denomination or another have accepted uncritically is their own object of knowledge. That there should be, for example, a science of man is seen as unproblematic, but Michel Foucault has been able to show when and how this specific object of science appeared in the Western world, and why this event should be considered an eruption in the realm of knowledge; he also considers the possible disappearance of this object (Foucault M 1970). Whether The Order of Things is for the human sciences what Kants Critique of Pure Reason was for the natural sciences - as G. Canguilhem (1968 p618) has suggested - is to be seen, but there is no doubt that Foucaults book, and his work in general, requires a closer attention from social scientists than it has received until now.
The answer we give to the question of the epistemic status of anthropology has immediate consequences for the methodology of research into its

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30

history. If we accept the cognitive autonomy of anthropological knowledge, in other words, if we assert the scientific character of anthropology, there will be certain limits to what an external history of the discipline can explain. Some extreme externalists and vulgar Marxists may find this statement unacceptable but I tend to agree with D. Lecourt that (social, economic, ideosubject to the internal conditions (the norm of the true) of scientific practice. Here is a principle which rules out from the start all epistemological economism, sociologism, and psychologism: it is indeed impossible to
&dquo;the effects of the external determinations
are

logical and political determinations)

achieve a genesis of scientific concepts on the basis of what are known 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 apparent that the external determinisms (what Mannheim used to call Seinsverbundenheit) will be fully operative and that the criteria of the true can not be found at the internal level. Of course, this is not to deny the relative autonomy of each ideological formation.
I am aware of the fact that any solution to this question can only be very fragile. That does not mean that one can avoid taking an implicit or explicit epistemological stand. Indeed, most of our historians of anthropoloty are still practising within the traditional framework and consequently the dilemma would only affect them in a rather superficial way. The connections between colonialism and anthropology, for example, which in the recent years have occupied a number of anthropologists with historical leanings (Asad T 1973 and Leclerc G 1972), is only the tip of an iceberg that has to be dealt with much more epistemological sophistication than has existed until now. The correlations that can be established within this field - colonialism and anthropology - which I myself favoured a few years ago, are a poor substitute for a true explanation. This is not to deny the imperative need for research in this area, but to suggest that without a framework which takes into account what the history and epistemology of the sciences has to offer, the results are bound to be extremely banal and lacking in insight.

A provisional way out of the question of the epistemic status of anthropology that I advocate is to consider anthropology as a science in formation, the foundations of which were laid down by the Enlightenment, but which never consolidated as a science because of a number of epistemological and ideological obstacles that emerged around the discipline in the nineteenth century and that have persisted into the twentieth century. This epistemological obstacle is the result of uncritically accepting the natural scientific model; among the epistemological obstacles I have been able to study are the effects of inductivism, empiricism, mechanical materialism and fixist 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. Ill return to this topic

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31

dealing with the problems of theoretical externalism. The ideological obstacles are the result of the class character of the society which produced and developed the social sciences. The effect of these obstacles is to drag the social sciences from the purely cognitive level to the more practico-social one, where it can be used, directly or indirectly, by the ideology and interests of the dominant class.
later when

picture that emerges from this state of things for anthropology is way simple and clear-cut. We could represent it as a model of opposed forces, some favouring a scientific anthropology, others leading to a dead end and finally others paving the way for an ideological anthropoloty. The picture that the discipline presents in each time and place (or to be more precise each thematic area within it) will vary according to the strength of each force in that particular conjuncture. It is safe to assert that the scientificity of each thematic area is in inverse relation to the feasibility of its ideological manipulation in any given time and place. That is one of the reasons why if one were to look at the area of kinship studies one would probably find it more rigorous than other areas of anthropology.
The
in
no

Without the need to go into details, it should be apparent by now that a rich pattern of research into the history of anthropology emerges as the result of asking certain questions and giving certain answers to these

questions.

(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 opening paragraph of a booklet on the history of anthropology would probably be endorsed 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 anthropology embraces the anthropology of all peoples, past and present. (Broce G 1973 p1 )
-

&dquo;

Broces position, whose extreme continuism is typical of the early histories of science, can be found, in a pure or diluted form, in many of the histories of anthropology mentioned above. This position fails to see that whatever there is of scientific in anthropology has emerged as the result of an epistemological break with the anthropological ideologies of the past. It was only with the Enlightenment, as Ill try to show later, that a conceptual revolution took place that enabled the formation, no matter how precarious, of a science of man and society. That this should have happened is the result of a number of factors which will be mentioned in due course; it can certainly not be attributed either to the speculation

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32

of social philosophers or to the so-called discovery of new facts (the encounter with the primitives), or even to a combination of both.
This position is not, in practice, incompatible with effectively placing the origins in the nineteenth century, at the time of the emergence of anthropology as a discipline (the period which elapsed from the foundation of the anthropological and ethnological societies to the seminal contributions of E. B. Tylor and L. H. Morgan and others). Broce is probably suggesting this when he tells us that by the expression history of anthropology one

usually

understands the

history

of modern western

anthropology (ibid

pl).
service to the so-called anthropological ideas of the past Middle Ages, Renaissance etc) can be thus combined with accepting effectively only nineteenth century anthropology. This contradiction appears as the result of a double confusion: the failure to distinguish between science and ideology and between theory and history. As a consequence of the first confusion we are presented, ideally, with a lineal and cumulative picture of the development of anthropology from ignorance to bliss. As a result of the second, the theories which are relevant for the present practice of anthropology get a favourable treatment (both in terms of space and eulogies). An extreme case would be some functionalist histories of anthropology in which the nineteenth century evolutionists are suppressed or nearly suppressed, and anthropology begins with F. Boas or B. Malinowski. It is not difficult to see how limited the usefulness of such histories is bound to be, since they are neither intended to discriminate between the scientific and non-scientific in anthropology at each moment nor to show whether and in which way, a theory represented progress with respect to another.

Paying lip

(Greece, Rome,

The contradictions between extreme continuism and de facto presentism can, 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 of science (Clagget M (ed. ) 1959 and Canguilhem G 1968), is a disease of epidemic proportions in the history of anthropology. 18 JVe have precursors of anthropology in general and precursors for each of our present day theoretical trends, concepts, etc. When presenting the problematic of the history of the sciences I have already mentioned the dangers involved in an indiscriminate use of the notion of precursor. Whatever virtues it may have to consolidate or to give prestige to our own theoretical positions, its use is extremely harmful for historians of a discipline, since most of the time this notion only accentuates those aspects of the thinkers of the past that suit our needs, in this sense, in only explaining by deforming the 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 the nineteenth century. Although in most cases they get the same treatment as thinkers from earlier periods, it can be alleged that the shelving of
.

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33

some

of their theories was due to extra-scientific reasons. course, would explain their reappearance in recent times.

That,

of

A different, though related question, is the continuous presence of some nineteenth century thinkers on the horizon of the social sciences; this seems to point to some basic scientific abnormality which has not been adequately considered. Indeed the question that has to be asked is of an epistemological kind: have we truly moved away from the two basic problematics delineated by our founding fathers? It is certainly encouraging to see some historians and theoreticians of the social sciences admit to the existence of two very different problematics in the history of the social sciences (positivistic versus critical science of man and society). Nevertheless, my answer to the previous question is an unmitigated no. Furthermore I dont think that the problem can be solved, as some anthropologists and sociologists seem to believe, through a synthesis between concensus and conflict theories (Collins R 1975). This suggestion is based upon the assumption that in the development of the social sciences a line of thought (which for the sake of the argument we can refer to as the Enlightenment-Marx tradition) was repressed - which is correct and that what is characteristic of this tradition is best represented by the idea of conflict - which is totally inappropriate.
This is not the place to develop my ideas on the pre-conditions of a science of man in history. I believe, however, that without a detailed study of the epistemological and ideological obstacles that historically affected the two basic problematics of the social sciences any attempt at an Aufhebung is bound to fail.

Returning now to the question of the beginnings of anthropology, its striking that one of the pitfalls that most of our traditional historians
seem 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 were autonomous, dangerous as it can be when applied to our present affairs, is undoubtedly fatal when we look at the past. I am not saying that historians should not concern themselves with what in many respects may be distinctive of anthropology, but rather than they should not forget the fundamental underlying unity of the sciences of man and society. It is true that anthropologists have gone to some pains to differentiate themselves from other social scientists, and there are institutional and other reasons which help to explain this state of affairs; but whatever the reasons may be, it is important to realize that the human and social sciences share the same explanatory framework.

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

proponents

major

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34

anthropology: those who trace the origins back to Greece, those who see the beginnings in the Renaissance and the voyages of exploration, and finally, those who limit the term anthropology to the societes savantes of the nineteenth century. What happened to the Enlightenment, the eager reader might ask. Could it be that its just a minor view ? But no, its just that the Spanish soldiers of fortune, the travellers and the figures of the Enlightenment are all lumped together under the category Voyagers and 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 laymans paradise; whoever is human can have opinions about the science of man (ibid p12). Of course, I dont see in what way this misplaced and edulcorated humanism, on the one hand, and the indiscriminate use of ancestors, on the other, can say much about anthropology as a science or convince anybody that its history is worth looking at. Statements of this kind only show how blind a history can be without the guidance of an epistemology.
One of the few historians of anthropology who has paid serious attention to the problem of the beginnings of anthropology is F. Voget. He is well aware of the fact that if we want to determine the beginnings we must possess certain discriminatory criteria. He proposes the four following
ones:

&dquo;Exponents express a strong sense of difference from other disciplines and seek to define and delimit a distinct area of investigation; whether implicit or explicit, special theory of reality is present and guides explanation; a distinctive methodology is used; special facts are accumulated that contrast with those usually employed in sister

disciplines (1967 p78).

I regret that the author does not elaborate the rationale for using these criteria. However, it appears that one can not talk about the foundation of a discipline unless the four criteria are met; this raises the problem of whether Voget is presenting us with a generalizing epistemology which would account for all the beginnings of the different sciences. I see such an epistemology as an unnecessary condition, since the epistemological weight of each criterion is very different. Indeed, I would like to see much more emphasis being given to the questions of the establishment of the basic concepts of a discipline and of the internal norms for scientific activity or proofs; these elements, though implicit in Vogets article, have to be spelled out since they are the only safeguard against a positivist epistemology which, as we have seen, tends to blur the differences between the sciences. In spite of these criticisms, Vogets criteria easily permit us to of the Greeks and the Renaissance as possible beginnings of anthropology. In his more recent work, Voget (1975) has even briefly attempted to examine certain obstacles which obstructed the appearance of anthropology in these two historical periods. Vogets position on the problems of the beginnings of anthropology has not changed from his early statement in
.

dispose 19

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35

which he credited the Enlightenment as the foundational moment and wondered 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 proposed in the eighteenth century (1967 p79).

Although

there has been a sustained interest in the Enlightenment among the social scientists which goes back at least as far as E. Durkheim, the thinkers of this period have usually been considered, until relatively recently, as precursors of the social sciences and not as the true founders. In the last few years they have been salvaged from oblivion partly because of the evolutionist and Marxist revival. There are a number of reasons why I consider that one should think of the Enlightenment as the period in which the foundations of a science of man and society were laid:

The attempt to formulate laws of man and society. These laws were seen in terms of cause and effect. 2 The idea that there were invariable laws of human nature and changing laws of society. 3 The formulation of the concept of mode of production as a social whole consisting of a number of interrelated levels, the determining level being the economic. 4 The formulation of the idea that history can be best explained as a succession of modes of production. The evolution from one stage to another being triggered off by changes taking place at the economic level. 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 of man and society (and later to the specific discipline called anthropology). The ulterior developments of the discipline, its theoretical and methodological as well as its institutional shifts, are also subjected to the influence of the internal and external factors. Again we are referring to a topic which seems of the utmost importance for any history of anthropology and that has received inadequate and insufficient treatment. In many histories the matter does not even arise since we are given a plain succession of authors and their corresponding theories, plausibly with the idea of establishing an acceptable pedigree, but not to query the problems of intellectual filiation, or of how concepts evolve or the effects of socio-economic, political, ideological and institutional matrices.
To my knowledge no attempt has been made at presenting a general schema which would permit the detailed explanation of the origins and development of anthropology. Instead we can only refer to certain factors which have been mentioned by different authors. For example, C. LeviStrauss has mentioned in a number of his writings the following factors: the cultural shock of the geographical discoveries, colonialism, the French Revolution, and Darwinian evolutionism (1960 p1966); M Harris (1968) refers to the Scientific Revolution as a crucial factor (and he is probably right) and A. Gouldner (1973) talks about the influence of Romanticism on nineteenth-century anthropology. I could certainly

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36

mention other factors, some probably more specific and maybe even more important, but the problem, of course, is that we dont know the relative weight of these factors for each historical period and for each part of the discipline. In these circumstances there is the potential risk, often actualised, of using one of these factors as deus ex machine when the explanation can only be the result of multiple internal and external

determinations.

(3)

The problem of theoretical externalism

There is one peculiar characteristic of the social sciences which I would like 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 the natural sciences. This situation has not been without serious and negative theoretical effects, the implications of which although adumbrated have not been fully spelled out. One of the consequences is that a history of anthropology can not be written independently of a general history of scientific thought. In other words, I maintain that in each historical period the problematic of anthropology has tended to depend on an imported model of scientific practice. If we add that this borrowing has often been mechanical and has ignored the specificity of anthropology, we can explain why what were intended as applications of the scientific method or of successful theories in other sciences, resulted in epistemological obstacles for anthropology. It is my contention that a number of epistemological obstacles developed around the social sciences. Over time this has resulted in the creation of a resistent web of obstacles which make scientific progress difficult. Without wanting to be exhaustive I would like to mention a few of them which I think particularly relevant. I want to insist that these obstacles are the result of what we could call certain scientistic fixations deeply embedded in the social sciences. One of the early obstacles could be referred to as mechanicism. It is the result of applying the idea that phenomena can be explained totally on mechanical principles to the social sciences. It can be said to derive from the theories of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Underlying this conception is an idea of causality which assumes an immediate relation of cause and effect; on the other hand, it only allows for the existence of efficient but not final causes. A related obstacle can be designated as vulgar materialism. This conception suggests that the techno-economic elements of society determine all the others; that the latter are pure epiphenomena. In a sense it is suggested that the existence of the technoeconomic sphere is necessary and sufficient cause for the existence of the other spheres. These two obstacles, along with a lineal and fixist interpretation of evolution, have been often present in Marxists and evolutionists. As a result, the social whole has been usually conceived of, not as an articulation of different spheres with a causality which has

.
-

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37

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

Another obstacle which derives from a certain misunderstanding of Newton can be referred to as inductivism. The basic point of inductivism is that what is scientific must be provable by reference to facts. This assumes that theories must be deduced from facts and consequently denies the need for a free conceptual construction in the development of theories. In anthropology this obstacle has often been identified with the RadcliffeBrownian prescription against conjectural history. In general, its effects have been to bring theoretical work to a near standstill. In the area of the history of anthropology the result has been to exclude the Enlightenment as the foundational moment of anthropology.

Empiricism is another of the obstacles which has prefaded anthropology from the beginnings, specially in the Anglo-Saxon world. There are two dimensions that I would like to refer to briefly. Firstly, empiricism equates science with collection of facts; secondly, and more importantly, it contains an ontological assumption according to which universal or laws are to be found at the empirical (behavioural) level. No distinction is made between nature as sensed and nature as perceive by science. Both dimensions of empiricism are widely shared by anthropologists and their deleterious effects have been duly substantiated in some recent studies (Willer D and J 1973).
With the concept of theoretical externalism I have tried to point out, in rather sketchy way, the situation of scientific dependency in which the social sciences have found and still find themselves today. This situation is not without important consequences. If it is true, as I believe it to be the case and I have briefly shown, social scientists have systematically misrepresented the scientific practice and have not usually taken into account the specificity of the social sciences.
a

Conclusion

In this paper I have attempted to show that a proper history of anthropology is an endeavour which requires sophisticated skills which can only be acquired through familiarization with the history of the sciences. epistemology (particularly of the social sciences) and a detailed knowledge of anthropological theories and methods of the present and the past. I have tried to show why anthropologists should care about the past of their
-

own

discipline.

I hope that I have also been able to show the limitations of most of the current histories of the discipline by suggesting, by means of crucial epistemological questions, areas and ways in which the future research could proceed.

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38

Admittedly

the breadth and the scope of my paper has

only allowed

me

to

present the bare bones of my arguments, but this should be sufficient given 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 result of this research. A number of ideas
this paper have been discussed with Carlos 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 and have done their best to clarify my English. I would also like to thank Talal Asad, Sally Humphries and Maurice Roche who kindly made a number of important comments on this paper. However, I feel that I have not answered them satisfactorily.

presented in

Bidon-Chanal

over

The first part of the paper was presented on 23 April at a seminar in the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics. I want to thank the members of the seminar for their comments. Last but not least I am grateful to my students at Sheffield University who stoically put up with a rough version of some of the ideas expressed in this paper 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 the scientific character of the social and human sciences. In the course of this paper, Ill try to show the negative effects that this process has had upon these social and human sciences, although a complete demonstration would require a lengthier treatment. 3 One has only to peruse scientific journals in the natural sciences to note the 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 the History 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 fully understand the question of how anthropologists have looked at their

past.

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6 A non-exhaustive list of books on the history or on historical aspects of anthropology (excluding monographs on individual authors) would include 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 would be considerably longer. As we can see from the History of Anthropology Newsletter, which began in 1973 in the USA, extensive research is presently being carried out on the history of anthropology. 7 In a remarkable article characterising the anthropological tradition J. Pouillon says: we choose what we say we are determined by, we present ourselves as the heirs of those we have made our predecessors

(1971 p78).
8

My survey takes into account the following books and articles listed in 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 page dedicated to Marx and Engels. A particularly interesting case is A. Kardiner and E. Preble (1961). In their book, promisingly entitled
, the authors assure us that their purpose is not to They Studied Man study the history of anthropology, but just the few great innovators in the development of a science of man (ibid p13); included are chapters on 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 history of anthropology is that of A. Kuper (1913) and it is limited to the developments of British Social Anthropology from 1922 to 1972. Nevertheless, the last chapter of the book seems to suggest that Kuper would consider Marx as an ancestor, though maybe somewhat reluctantly. 10 Meyer does well to add that it is interesting to note the keen attention which leading Marxists like Engels, Luxemburg, Plekhanov, Kautsky and others, followed the developments of modern anthropology (1954
One of the names that should be added to the list is that of H. Cunow whose anthropological work, particularly on the Incas, has only recently been appreciated (Murra J, 1956). 11 See the pioneering work of M. Godelier but more particularly the historiographical work of L. Krader (1972, 1975) on the ethnological notebooks of Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production. 12 I should add that at present there are encouraging signs for the development of a proper history of anthropology, particularly in the work of G. 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

p157).

(1970),

(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.

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40

15 What follows is a summary of this problematic. For a full treatment see the first part of An Epistemological History of the Concept of Mode of Production , my Ph. D thesis to be submitted to the University of London. 16 Anthropologists looking at the past of their discipline seem to be reluctant to follow this precept. The treatment of L. H. Morgan is a case in point. He has been constantly praised for being a structuralfunctionalist avant la lettre, but victimised for having been an evolutionist (see among others M. Fortes, 1969). To my knowledge, there has been no satisfactory attempt at understanding the work of Morgan as 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).
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 treatment of Rousseau in C. Levi-Strauss (1973). 19 J. Rowe (1965) and M. Hodgen (1964), among others, have placed the beginnings 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 my doctoral thesis I treat this point in depth.

(c)

References

Althusser, L. (1974) Philosophie et philosophie spontanee des savants (1967), Paris, Maspero Asad, T. (ed. ) (1973) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter , London,
Ithaca Press

Bachelard, G. (1938)

La formation de lesprit

(1951) Lactivite rationaliste de la physique contemporaine , Paris, PUF Becker, E. (1971) The Lost Science of Man, New York, G. Braziller Boas, F. (1904) The History of Anthropology, 20 , pp513-524 Bohannan, P. and Glazer, M. (eds. ) (1973) High Points in Anthropology ,
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scientifique, Paris, Vrin;

York, A. Knopf
Harvard UP

? Paris, Gallimard Boudon, R. (1968) A quoi sert la notion de structure Brew, J.O. (ed. ) (1968) One Hundred Years of Anthropology, Cambridge

(Mass),

Broce, G. (1973) History of Anthropology , Mineappolis, Burgess Burrow, J. W. (1966) Evolution and Society , London, Cambridge UP

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Butterfield,

H.

(1949)
(1955)

The

Origins

of Modern

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