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Critical Anthropology
Critical Anthropology
Foundational Works
Contents
Introduction 7
Part VI: Working over History: Cultural Idealism and Materialism 179
10. No History Is an Island: An Exchange between 181
Jonathan Friedman and Marshall Sahlins
Jonathan Friedman
11. Deserted Islands of History: A Reply to 213
Jonathan Friedman
Marshall Sahlins
Introduction
8 Introduction
Introduction 9
10 Introduction
Introduction 11
Wallersteins view by taking more seriously the effects on the total system
generated from below, as it were, by sociocultural systems whose cardi-
nal features, far being obliterated, as is often said of Wallersteins model,
maintain their own dynamics.
If there was a polarizing moment when it became more clear what
the divisions between a critical anthropology and anthropology were it
occurred within the furore surrounding the publication of two edited
volumes that continue to this day to feed discussion about the politi-
cal implications of a science built, in substantial part, around the long-
term political, economic and social asymmetries springing from imperial
and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century globalization avant la
lettre.
The publication of Talal Asads (ed.) Anthropology and the Colonial
Encounter (1973) and the near contemporaneous publication of Dell
Hymes (ed.) Reinventing Anthropology (1972) represented consolida-
tions of several critical trends that had long been present in anthropology
and which continue to be broadly consistent with the general thrust of
critical anthropology. While the essays in Asad (1973) are most directly
addressed to the UK social anthropology, and those in Hymes (1972)
offered a distinctly (but not exclusively) the US perspective, there are
significant areas of overlap, particularly with respect to anthropologys
role, by and large unbidden, as an expression of imperial interest.
The most mechanical expression of the relationship between anthro-
pology and the extension and maintenance of imperial and colonial
political power has been repeatedly traced to the title (but not so much
the essay itself) of Kathleen Goughs 1968 essay in The Monthly Review,
Anthropology and Imperialism.5 Two inferences drawn from that asso-
ciation persist and continue to be confused. One inference has anthro-
pology in the service of imperialism; the other sees anthropology as
arising from, as the Asad title puts it, the colonial encounter. In other
words, anthropology would not exist except for the conditions afforded
by imperial/colonial conquest, but it is not directly part of the imperial/
colonial project.
That ambiguity neatly fits the critical anthropology brief, for critical
anthropology is not outside the inequalities that prevail in imperial and
postimperial relations between core and periphery, but it is not spon-
soring those inequalities. It exists in substantial part because of those
particular conditions. It seems unlikely that a Sanum tribesman would
conduct fieldwork in Buckingham Palace or the World Bank, not only
because it would not be permitted, but also because it is unlikely to be of
much interest in Sanum terms.6
The link between Marxism and critical anthropology is obvious,
but also complicated. For a brief period during the 1970s7 Marxist
12 Introduction
Introduction 13
14 Introduction
Introduction 15
16 Introduction
Introduction 17
18 Introduction
Introduction 19
20 Introduction
Notes
1. There are strong (residual) evolutionist currents in critical anthropology, but the
distinction here is between social evolutionism of the Spencerian, reductionist
sort and more metaphorical usages engaged in expressing systematic, multilinear
change over time.
2. Underlying in two senses: First, that among causal factors/structures, some
might be more important that others, e.g., the economic in the last instance;
second, that there is the need to construct/hypothesize a model to explain what
appears to be happening empirically.
3. As a discipline, anthropology has been highly susceptible to a tendency c ommon
in other fields of the ideological sciences according to which the struggle to
promote a central, field-wide theoretical centre what some unsympathetic
observers would refer to as an obsession with master narratives has resulted in
much theoretical type-casting and demonizing.
4. In both the USA and the UK, professional bodies have shown enormous reticence
when it comes to criticizing the behaviour of members whose scholarly activities
and research have, in the view of many, been clearly transgressive. See Price 2000
for introduction to this discussion.
5. The cover of that issue of the Monthly Review flags the article as Anthropology:
Child of Imperialism, but the actual article is entitled Anthropology and
Imperialism.
6. In the UK, much of the professional reaction to the film Meet the Tribe (Searle
2007) had a very patronizing tone reflecting deep uncertainties about what it
meant for the other to pretend to do anthropology in the wrong home.
7. This is not to say that both prior to and following the 1970s there were not seri-
ous engagements between anthropology and Marxism (of various types), but for
that brief period the boundaries of a marxist anthropology were well defined
enough that one could almost talk of a sub-field.
8. That is not to slight those for whom the relationship between theory and practice
was more than a seminar topic, but anthropology is largely confined to the cam-
pus. Furthermore, research practice in the field tends to be highly atomised/
individualistic, and not generally a focus of collective action.
9. In many respects the expression structural Marxist was a label of general con-
venience that acknowledged an overlap between two influential social theoreti-
cal trends of the time. There was an actual synthetic claim made by Althusser/
Althusserians, but the diversity of both structuralist and Marxist positions rep-
resented throughout the humanities and social sciences (and elsewhere) reduced
Introduction 21
22 Introduction
18. The two volume rationality debate represented in Wilson (1971) and Hollis
and Lukes (1982) was resolved in favour of a normative cultural relativism that
was consolidated in the mainstreaming of postmodernism. It is salutary and
disorienting to see in the current vogue for perspectivism/ontological pluralism,
echoes of that, much earlier (and widely unacknowledged), discussion.
19. Even if it is rather hard, at mid-century, to locate the core of a rigidly scientific
or scientistic sociocultural anthropology to which the symbolist/interpretive is
such a necessary, palliative reaction. As a social science, long set between the
two-culture demands of the natural science/humanities dialectic, reductionist-
scientism was, according to many, reflected in the vulgar materialism of Harris,
but as Friedman (1974) noted, Harriss relationship to science was highly ques-
tionable. In Geertz (1967) Lvi-Strauss bore the brunt of an attack on formalistic
and scientific pretention.
20. Ian Hacking offers a particularly cogent critique (1999).
21. The Open Anthropology Cooperative a web-based association, includes 195
anthropological interest groups including those devoted to the anthropology of
roads, humour and laughter and entrepreneurship.
22. The statement of one ethnographic journal, for example, describes its purpose as
providing:
Introduction 23
Euro-American axis. Both Brazilian and Mexican anthropology, to note but two,
represent expressions of anthropological interest, which, while in part shaped by
and in scholarly terms respondent to Euro-American institutional weight, pursue
independent strategies and contain unique elements not represented in the Euro-
American tradition(s). The anthropology of the South more narrowly defined,
takes as its defining characteristic an autonomy from the hegemony (it is often
put as such) of the traditional metropolitan centres of anthropological authority.
27. See, for example, the noisy response to the appointment of the new editors of
the American Anthropologist in 1996 [unauthorised.org/anthropology/anthro-l/
february-1996/0617.html].
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Introduction 25