Before Social Anthropology: Essays on the History of British Anthropology / Edition 1

by James Urry

Overview

First Published in 1993. From the 1930s, British anthropology was dominated by social anthropologists, an achievement of the two founding fathers, Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. However, the field of ethnology had originated in Britain in the 1840s and a broadly based general anthropology was well established before the rise of social anthropology. The essays in this volume explore the development of British anthropology in the period from 1880 to 1920 and deal with such diverse issues as the establishment of new research methodologies, the development of ethnographic reporting, institutional change and the professionalization of the subject, and the connection between anthropology and imperialism. These essays reveal how the establishment of social anthropology involved a narrowing field which at first involved not just the study of custom but also included archaeology, physical anthropology and philology. The emergence of the new approaches of the 1920s and 1930s, and the triumph of social anthropology as an academic, intellectual and professional discipline in post-war Britain also led to the subsequent loss of a more holistic vision of anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783718652921
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/05/1993
Series:	Studies in Anthropology and History , #6
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dr James Urry is a Reader in Anthropology at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

Preface; INTRODUCTION: The search for unity in British anthropology, 1880-1920; Section 01 : Notes and Queries on Anthropology and the development of field methods in British anthropology, 1870-1920; Section 02 : 'Facts' to argument: Structure and function in the history of ethnographic writing in the British tradition, 1890-1940; Section 03 : From Zoology to Ethnology: A.C. Haddon's conversion to anthropology; Section 04 : Englishmen, Celts and Iberians: The ethnographic survey of the United Kingdom, 1892-1899; Section 05 : Imperial anthropology and institutional developments in British anthropology, 1890-1924; Section 06 : Radcliffe-Browne's 'pronunciamentos' on anthropology and his invention of British 'social' anthropology, 1913-1944; Bibliography; Index;