CHAPTER XVII
The Place of Anthropology in the Social Sciences and Problems Raised in Teaching It
THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY
THE PRESENT organization of anthropological studies is, in a way, a challenge to the authors of this volume.1 Logically they ought to have provided a general report on the teaching of social anthropology, since the name of that discipline places it among the social sciences and it appears to have a separate content. But difficulties at once arise; where, save in Great Britain, do we find “social anthropology” taught as a separate, organic discipline in an autonomous department? All the other countries (and certain establishments in Great Britain itself) speak of anthropology pure and simple, or of cultural anthropology, or again of ethnology, ethnography, folklore, etc. These names certainly cover social anthropology (or the subjects grouped under it elsewhere), but they cover many other things at the same time—and is it possible to regard technology, prehistory, archaeology, certain aspects of linguistics, or physical anthropology, as social sciences? We seem to be departing from the problem in the very act of approaching it.
But the position is even more complicated. Social anthropology tends to be present in a vast series of studies which have no evident association with the social sciences; yet, by a singular paradox, these studies are frequently connected with the social sciences in another way: Many universities, particularly in the United States, have departments of “anthropology and sociology,” “anthropology and social sciences,” or similar titles. Just when we think we have grasped the connection between anthropology and social science, it evades us; and it is scarcely lost before we find it again on a new plane.
It is as though social and cultural anthropology, far from appearing on the scene of scientific development as an independent subject claiming a place among the other disciplines, had taken shape somewhat in the manner of a nebula, gradually incorporating a substance previously diffused or distributed in another way and, by this concentration, bringing about a general redistribution of research subjects among the humanistic and social sciences.
It is important to realize, from the outset, that anthropology is not distinguished from other humanistic and social sciences by any subject of study peculiar to it alone. At first, indeed, it was concerned with so-called savage or primitive societies, and we shall later investigate the reasons for this. But this interest is increasingly shared by other disciplines, especially demography, social psychology, political science, and law. On the other hand, we have the strange phenomenon that anthropology develops as those societies tend to disappear, or at least to lose their distinctive features—it is no longer entirely bound up with stone axes, totemism, and polygamy! This has been well exemplified in the last few years, during which anthropologists have turned to the study of so-called civilized societies. What then, in fact, is anthropology? For the time being we shall merely say that it proceeds from a particular conception of the world or from an original way of approaching problems, both discovered during the study of social phenomena which are not necessarily simpler (as people often tend to think) than those appearing in the observer’s own society, but which are so remote from them that they throw into relief certain general features of social life which anthropology makes it its business to study.
This conclusion may be reached in different ways. In some cases it is the outcome of ethnographical research; in others, of linguistic analysis; in yet others, of attempts to interpret the findings of archaeological excavations. Anthropology is too young a science for its teaching not to reflect the local and historical circumstances that are at the root of each particular development. One university may thus combine cultural anthropology and linguistics in a single department, because linguistic studies there early assumed an anthropological character; another may arrange matters differently, but for the same kind of reason.
In these circumstances, the present authors might well wonder whether it was possible, or even desirable, artificially to “systematize’’ different situations, each of which justifies a separate explanation. A general report on the teaching of anthropology would be bound either to distort facts by placing them in arbitrary frameworks or to be reduced to historical surveys which would differ for each country and often even for each university. Since anthropology is a growing science whose independence is not yet universally recognized, it has seemed necessary to proceed by another method. A statement of facts must be based on the de facto situation; and since social anthropology, in the great majority of cases, is allied to other disciplines, and the social science in whose company it is most frequently found is sociology, both have finally been linked together in the same general report. This however is only a temporary arrangement, resulting not from a considered plan but from chance and improvisation. It is not, therefore, enough to define the general terrain in which the teaching of anthropology is now emerging; we must also try to discover its present trend, and the main lines of an evolution which is unfolding in various places. The general report on the teaching of sociology and anthropology meets the first requirement; the present work meets the second.
A GLANCE AT THE SITUATION TODAY
From the facts contained in the general report, certain conclusions emerge. Irrespective of local variations and idiosyncrasies, three main methods of teaching anthropology can be distinguished. It is taught either by means of isolated chairs (of which there may be only one in the university in question or, alternatively, several attached to various faculties or establishments); or by departments (which may be purely anthropological or may combine anthropology with other disciplines); or, again, by institutes or schools which are of an inter- or extra-faculty nature, i.e., which regroup subjects taught under other titles in the various faculties, or organize instruction in the subjects proper to them (both of these systems may, moreover, be combined).
Isolated Chairs of Anthropology. This method is very widespread, but never seems to be adopted deliberately. A country or university which decides to start teaching anthropology usually begins by founding a chair and goes no further if developments are hindered by a lack of students or a lack of openings for them (the latter generally explains the former). If the position is more favorable, other chairs are added to the first and the whole tends to form an institute or department. This trend is very apparent in the United States, where a survey of the range of teaching establishments, from the smallest to the largest, reveals all stages of development—from a single anthropology course taught by the teacher of an adjacent discipline to a department of anthropology containing a team of teachers and conferring a Ph.D. Between these two extremes may be found a single chair attached to another department, a mixed department, or, finally, a department of anthropology that does not take the student beyond his B.A. or M.A. But the formation of a complete department is always the object aimed at.
Another type of development can also lead to isolated chairs—as when we have chairs which, originally founded in a discipline far removed from anthropology, are brought back toward it by a process of academic evolution that was unforeseeable at the time of their foundation. France presents two striking examples. The £cole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes (National School of Modern Oriental Languages) was started at a period when it was thought that the study of all the world’s languages would develop along lines similar to those of classical philology; but experience has shown that a knowledge of certain unwritten languages can be acquired only by unorthodox methods, much more dependent on anthropology than on traditional linguistics. Similarly, at the £cole Pratique des Hautes £tudes (Practical School of Higher Studies), the chairs devoted to religions of peoples with little or no written traditions tend to diverge, in trend, from the others and to assume an increasingly anthropological character. In cases of this kind, anthropology, if one may so put it, “contaminates” other disciplines sporadically and faces the administration and the educator with unforeseen problems that are very difficult to solve within the framework of traditional groupings.
Finally, we must cite the case of a mixed department, well illustrated in Great Britain. At the time when oriental studies were becoming increasingly tinged with anthropology, the rapid development of African studies showed the need for introducing philological, historical, and archaeological considerations into this field. An opportunity for regrouping was thus opened up and was sanctioned some years ago by the conversion of the School of Oriental Studies into the School of Oriental and African Studies, where anthropology became closely associated both with the social sciences and with humanistic studies—an arrangement that would not have been possible, for studies bearing on those particular regions of the world, under any conventional academic structure.
Departments. In theory, the departmental system may seem ideal. American universities, as we have just seen, are tending toward it; and in other countries where anthropological studies are in full development—like Great Britain, Australia, and India—departments of anthropology are being founded and are increasing in number. In fact, a department of anthropology meets two requirements—well-coordinated courses suited to the different sections or aspects of research, and gradual preparation for diplomas, from the elementary examinations up to the doctorate. But the system involves certain difficulties. In countries with a rigid academic tradition, which strictly separates sciences from the arts or humanities, the department of anthropology implies a choice between the two types of faculty; so that one is led to envisage two departments, one of social or cultural anthropology and another ctf physical anthropology. It is of course in the interest of these two branches to specialize; yet an anthropologist, whatever his particular line, cannot dispense with a basic knowledge of physical anthropology, while this latter branch is lost unless it constantly keeps in mind the sociological aspects. We shall return to this point later.
France may be cited as an example of the abnormal situation arising in anthropological work from a rigid separation between the faculties of science and arts. The University of Paris grants three diplomas in anthropology—a diploma in ethnology (with arts optional) awarded by the faculty of arts; the same diploma with sciences optional, awarded by the two faculties combined; and, lastly, a diploma in physical anthropology, awarded by the faculty of science alone. The students are neither sufficiently numerous nor, above all, sufficiently specialized (since these diplomas involve only a year’s study) to justify such complexity.
But the inconveniences of the departmental system are felt even in the countries that have most readily adopted it. In England itself, the University of Oxford prefers the system of institutes (with the Institute of Social Anthropology), and in America increasing doubts are arising: The departmental system often entails premature specialization, with inadequate general education as its corollary. The example of the University of Chicago is typical in this respect; to remedy the defects just mentioned, the department of anthropology first became part of a division of social sciences, but this change had hardly been effected before expert minds began to feel the need for similar contacts with humanistic studies. Thus arose the third system, that of schools or institutes.
Schools or Institutes. The best known examples of these are the Escuela Nacional de Antropología (National School of Anthropology) in Mexico City and the Institut d’Ethnologie (Institute of Ethnology) at the University of Paris. The former offers a comprehensive form of professional training which amounts to a specialization and completion of past university studies; the latter aims, rather, at regrouping and supplementing current university studies. The Institut d’Ethnologie stems from three faculties—law, arts, and science. In preparation for a university examination—the ethnology diploma of the arts or science degree—it prescribes for students courses given in the three faculties, adding other courses organized under its own responsibility but sanctioned by the University. The same interfaculty approach is seen in the courses for the Overseas Peoples Studies Degree, which involve certificates awarded by the faculties of law and arts and, sometimes, by the faculty of science.
We shall later explain why this seems to us the most satisfactory system. For the moment we shall merely note that it, too, raises problems; the autonomy of the institute often has to be paid for by a lowering of status, in comparison with teaching conceived on more traditional lines. It is a somewhat irregular system; hence the difficulty of introducing a sufficiently long period of study culminating in diplomas which rank with those awarded by the faculties. At the University of Paris there has been partial success in extending the length of the courses to two years for the most promising students, thanks to the foundation of another establishment, the Centre de Formation aux Recherches Ethnologiques (Ethnological Training Center), devoted to specialized courses and practical work; but this solution too is questionable, as it removes anthropological teaching further from traditional lines instead of bringing it nearer and raises the standard of the work without permitting it to culminate in the usual highest type of award.
These few examples show the difficulty of solving the problems of anthropology teaching on the basis of experience gained. We can, in fact, hardly talk of “experience gained”; the experiments are still in progress, and neither their ultimate trend nor their results can yet be seen. Perhaps we should state the problem in another way. For lack of facts from which to draw conclusions by induction, let us seek the answer in anthropology itself. Let us try to see not only where anthropology stands at present, but where it is heading. A long-term view may—better than any non-forward-looking analysis of the present confused situation, characteristic of an enthusiastic period—enable us to discern the principles that should govern its teaching.
THE QUESTION OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The first problem is one of classification. Is anthropology, whose appearance has made so marked an impact upon the social sciences, itself a social science? Undoubtedly it is, since it deals with human groups. But being by definition a “science of man,” does it not come within the range of the so-called humanistic sciences or studies? And by reason of that branch of it which is known almost everywhere under the name of physical anthropology (though as “anthropology” pure and simple in several European countries), does it not belong to the natural sciences? No one will deny that anthropology has this threefold aspect. And in the United States, where a “tripartite” division of the sciences has been carried fairly far, anthropological societies have secured the right of affiliation with the three great science councils, each of which controls one of the fields we have just differentiated. Let us take a closer look at the nature of this threefold relationship.
First let us deal with physical anthropology. This is concerned with questions such as man’s evolution from animal form and the present division into racial groups distinguishable by anatomical or physiological characteristics. Can it therefore be described as a natural study of man? To define it thus would be to forget that the last phases, at least, of human evolution—those which have differentiated the races of Homo sapiens, and even perhaps the stages which led to him—occurred under conditions very different from those governing the development of other living species. From the time when man acquired the power of speech (the very complex techniques and the marked similarity of form which characterize prehistoric industries imply that he already had a language wherewith to teach them and pass them on), he himself determined, though not necessarily consciously, the processes of his biological evolution. Each human society conditions its own physical perpetuation by a complex body of rules, such as the prohibition of incest, endogamy, exogamy, preferential marriage between certain types of relatives, polygamy, or monogamy—or simply by the more or less systematic application of moral, social, economic, and esthetic standards. By conforming to these rules, a society facilitates certain types of unions or associations and excludes others. An anthropologist who tried to interpret the evolution of human races or subraces as though it were simply the result of natural conditions would enter the same blind alley as a zoologist attempting to explain the present differences among dogs by purely biological or ecological considerations, without taking human intervention into account. Men have made themselves to no less an extent than they have made the races of their domestic animals, the only difference being that the process has been less conscious or voluntary. Consequently, physical anthropology, though using knowledge and methods derived from the natural sciences, has particularly close connections with the social sciences. To a very great extent, it amounts to a study of the anatomical and physiological changes resulting, in a given living species, from the emergence of social life, of language, and of a system of values—or, to use a more general term, of culture.
ETHNOGRAPHY, ETHNOLOGY, AND ANTHROPOLOGY
We are, then, very far from the period when the various aspects of human civilizations (tools, clothing, institutions, beliefs) were treated as a kind of extension of, or as dependent upon, the somatic qualities characterizing various human groups. The opposite relationship would be nearer the truth. The term ethnology with this outmoded meaning survives here and there, notably in India, where the system of castes (endogamous and technically specialized) has given it a measure of tardy and superficial consistency, and in France, where an extremely rigid academic structure tends to perpetuate traditional terminology (cf. the Chair of Ethnology of Living and Fossilized Man in the National Museum of Natural History, as though there were any significant relation between the anatomical structure of fossilized man and his tools and as though the ethnology of present-day man raised the question of his anatomical structure). But once these confusions have been eliminated, we remain puzzled, after reading the general report, by the disturbing diversity of terms that require precise definition. What are the connections and the differences among ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology? What is meant by the distinction (so irksome, apparently, to persons of different nationalities preparing reports) between social anthropology and cultural anthropology? And what is the relationship between anthropology and the disciplines frequently combined with it in a single department—sociology, social science, geography, and, sometimes, even archaeology and linguistics?
The answer to the first question is relatively simple. In all countries, it seems, ethnography is interpreted in the same way: It corresponds to the first stages in research—observation and description, field work. The typical ethnographical study consists of a monograph dealing with a social group small enough for the author to be able to collect most of his material by personal observation. Ethnography also includes the methods and techniques connected with field work, with the classification, description, and analysis of particular cultural phenomena—whether weapons, tools, beliefs, or institutions. In the case of material objects, these operations are generally performed in the museum, which in this respect may be regarded as an extension of field work (an important point, to which we shall return).
In relation to ethnography, ethnology represents a first step toward synthesis. Without excluding direct observation, it leads toward conclusions sufficiently comprehensive to preclude, or almost: to preclude, their being based solely on first-hand information. The synthesis may be of three kinds: geographical, if information about neighboring groups is to be collated; historical, if the purpose is to reconstruct the past of one or several peoples; systematic, if one type of technique, custom, or institution is selected for special attention. It is in this sense that the term ethnology is applied, for instance, to the Bureau of American Ethnology in the Smithsonian Institute, to the Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie (Journal of Ethnology), or to the Institut d’Ethnologie (Institute of Ethnology) at the University of Paris. In all these cases, ethnology includes ethnography as its first step and is an extension of it.
For a considerable time, and in several countries, this “duality” was regarded as sufficient unto itself. This was especially so wherever historical and geographical considerations predominated and where the opinion prevailed that synthesis could not range beyond determination of the origins and centers of cultural diffusion. Other countries—France, for instance—held to the same view, but for different reasons; the final stage of the synthesis was left to other disciplines—sociology (in the French sense of the term), human geography, history, and, sometimes, even philosophy. Thus, apparently, it came about that in several European countries the term anthropology was left undefined and was therefore limited in practice to physical anthropology.
On the other hand, wherever we meet with the terms social anthropology or cultural anthropology they are linked to a second and final stage of the synthesis, based upon ethnographical and ethnological conclusions. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, anthropology aims at a global knowledge of man—embracing the subject in its full historical and geographical extension, seeking knowledge applicable to the whole of human evolution from, let us say, Hominidae to the races of today, and leading to conclusions which may be either positive or negative but which are valid for all human societies, from the large modern city to the smallest Melanesian tribe. In this sense it may thus be said that there is the same connection between anthropology and ethnology as that, described above, between ethnology and ethnography. Ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology do not form three different disciplines, or three different conceptions of the same branch of study. They are in fact three stages, or three moments of time, in the same line of investigation, and preference for one or another of these only means that attention is concentrated on one type of research, which can never exclude the other two.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
If the terms social anthropology and cultural anthropology were intended simply to distinguish certain fields of study from those covered by physical anthropology, there would be no difficulty. But the preference of the United Kingdom for the former and that of the United States for the latter term, and the light thrown on this difference of opinion in the course of a recent controversy between the American G. P. Murdock and the Englishman R. Firth,2 show that each term, where chosen, has been chosen for definite theoretical reasons. In many instances, no doubt, chance has determined the choice of a particular term (especially for the titles of university chairs). It seems, indeed, that the term social anthropology came into use in England because a title had to be found to distinguish a new chair from others for which all the traditional terms had already been used. Nor is any difference to be seen when we simply consider the actual meanings of the words cultural and social The concept of culture originated in England, since it was Tylor who first defined it as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” 3 Culture therefore relates to the specific differences between men and animals, thus leading to what has ever since been the classic antithesis between nature and culture. Viewed in this light, man appears chiefly as Homo faber or “toolmaker.” Customs, beliefs, and institutions are then seen as techniques comparable to other techniques, though no doubt more purely intellectual—techniques promoting social life and making social life possible, just as the techniques of agriculture make it possible to satisfy man’s need for food, or those of cloth-making to protect him from the rigors of the weather. Social anthropology denotes merely the study of social organization—an extremely important subject, but only one of the many subjects making up cultural anthropology. This way of stating the problem seems typical of American science, or at least of the early stages of its development.
It was probably not pure chance that the term social anthropology was first brought into use in the United Kingdom as the title of the first chair held by Sir J. G. Frazer, who was much less interested in techniques than in beliefs, customs, and institutions. It was A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, however, who brought out the underlying meaning of the term when he defined the object of his own research work as social relations and the social structure. The dominant idea here is no longer that of the tool-maker but that of the group, and the group considered as such—that is to say, the whole complex of forms of communication on which social life is based. There is no contradiction, be it noted, or even any opposition between the two points of view. The best proof of this is to be found in the development of French sociological thought: Only a few years after Durkheim had shown that social phenomena should be studied as things (which, expressed in different terms, is the standpoint of cultural anthropology), his nephew and follower, Mauss, simultaneously with Malinowski, put forward the related thesis that things (manufactured articles, weapons, tools, and ritual objects) are themselves social phenomena (which represents the view of social anthropology). We may therefore say that cultural anthropology and social anthropology cover exactly the same ground, but that one starts from techniques and material things and proceeds ultimately to the “super-technique” of social and political activity, which makes life in society possible and determines the forms it takes, while the other starts from social life and works down to the things on which social life leaves its mark and the activities through which it manifests itself. Cultural anthropology and social anthropology are like two books which include the same chapters, though the latter may be arranged in different order and the number of pages in each may vary.
Nevertheless, even on this comparison, certain finer distinctions can be drawn. Social anthropology developed out of the discovery that all the aspects of social life—economic, technical, political, legal, esthetic, and religious—make up a significant complex and that no one of these aspects can be understood unless it is considered together with all the others. It therefore tends to work from the whole to the parts, or, at least, to give the former logical precedence over the latter. A technique does not merely have a use: It also fulfills a function, and a function, if it is to be properly understood, implies sociological and not only historical, geographical, mechanical, or physico-chemical considerations. The complex of functions, in turn, brings in a new notion, that of structure, and the importance attributed to the idea of social structure in contemporary anthropological research is well known.
Admittedly, cultural anthropology was to arrive, almost simultaneously, at a similar conception, although by an entirely different path. Instead of the static view of the whole social group as a sort of system or constellation, the question of dynamics—of how culture is handed on from generation to generation—was to lead cultural anthropology to exactly the same conclusion, i.e., that the system of interconnections among all aspects of social life plays a more important part in the transmission of culture than any one of those aspects considered separately. In this way, the “culture and personality” studies (which, in the tradition of cultural anthropology, can be traced back to the teachings of Franz Boas) were, by this unexpected route, to be linked with the “social structure” studies going back to Radcliffe-Brown and, through him, to Durkheim. Whether anthropology is described as “cultural” or “social,” its object always is to discover the whole man, as revealed in the one case through his works and in the other through his representations. It is thus understandable that a “cultural” bias brings anthropology closer to geography, technology, and prehistoric studies, while a “sociological” bias gives it more direct associations with archaeology, history, and psychology. In both cases, there is a particularly close link with linguistics, because language is at once the prototype of the cultural phenomenon (distinguishing man from the animals) and the phenomenon whereby all the forms of social life are established and perpetuated. It is therefore logical that, in the systems of academic classification analyzed in the general report, the usual tendency is not to treat anthropology separately but to group it with one or more of the following branches of study:
In the above diagram, the horizontals mainly represent the view of cultural anthropology, the verticals that of social anthropology, and the obliques both. But—leaving aside the fact that there is a tendency, among modern research students, for the two standpoints to converge—it must not be forgotten that, even in the extreme cases, the difference is only one of standpoint, not of the subject investigated. The question of the standardization of terms thus becomes much less important. There seems to be almost unanimous agreement today on the use of the term anthropology, rather than ethnography or ethnology, as the best designation for all these three phases of research. A recent international survey shows this clearly.4 The use of the term anthropology can therefore be unhesitatingly recommended for the titles of departments, institutes, or schools in which research or teaching in these subjects is carried on. And it is unnecessary to go further than this: The differences in temperament and interests—which are always productive of good results—between those in charge of teaching and the conduct of research work will determine the choice of the adjective social or cultural as better reflecting individual particularities.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
One brief comment remains to be made on folklore. We shall not attempt to recount the very complicated history of this term; broadly speaking, it denotes the study of matters which, though relating to the society to which the observer belongs, necessitate the use of methods of investigation and observation techniques, similar to those employed when dealing with far-distant societies. We need not at this time go into the reasons for this state of affairs; but, whether we consider the explanation to lie in the fact that the phenomena studied are very old (and therefore far distant, in time if not in space)5 or in the unconscious, group character of certain forms of social and mental activity in any society, including our own,6 the study of folklore is undoubtedly connected, either by its subject or by its methods (and probably by both at once), to anthropology. Certain countries, particularly the Scandinavian ones, seem to prefer to treat folklore as a comparatively distinct branch of study. The reason for this is that they took up the problems of anthropology relatively late, whereas at a very early date they had begun to investigate problems connected with their own particular traditions. They have thus proceeded from the particular to the general, while in France, for instance, the situation has been reversed. In France we started by theorizing on human nature and gradually turned to the study of facts as a basis for speculation or in order to set bounds to it. The best situation is probably that in which both points of view have been adopted and developed simultaneously, as in Germany and the English-speaking countries (in each case, for different reasons), and it is this situation which accounts for the earlier progress made in anthropological studies in those countries.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
From these considerations, which it would be wrong to regard as purely theoretical, an initial conclusion emerges: Under no circumstances can anthropology allow itself to be dissociated from the natural sciences (to which it is linked by physical anthropology) or from the humanistic studies (with which it is closely connected by geography, archaeology, and linguistics). If it had to select a single allegiance, it would declare itself a social science—not in the sense in which this term denotes a single, separate field but, on the contrary, because it underlines a feature that tends to be common to all the disciplines: Today even biologists and physicists are becoming increasingly conscious of the social implications, or rather the anthropological significance, of their discoveries. Man is no longer satisfied merely to acquire knowledge; while accumulating more of this, he regards himself as the “knower” and his research is daily brought a little more to bear on the two inseparable factors presented by a humanity that transforms the world and a humanity that, while it acts, is transforming itself.
Thus, when the social sciences demand their own separate place within the university framework, anthropology subscribes to this demand. Not however without certain mental reservations. It realizes that such independence would lead to the development of social psychology, political science, and sociology and to a modification of what are often considered to be overtraditional standpoints on the part of law and economic science. But so far as anthropology itself is concerned, the establishment of faculties of social science, where they do not at present exist, would not resolve its problems; for were anthropology to be included in these faculties, it would feel no less out of place than it would in faculties of science or arts. It stems, in fact, from three different disciplines, for each of which it desires balanced representation in teaching, lest it should itself suffer from lack of balance if unable to give effective proof of its triple allegiance. From its point of view, the only satisfactory solution is the institute or school where the instruction given at the three faculties concerned would be rearranged in an original, comprehensive system, around the syllabuses peculiar to the school or institute itself.
Newly established sciences find difficulty in inserting themselves into traditional structures. It can never be sufficiently emphasized that anthropology is by far the youngest of these young sciences (the social sciences) and that the general solutions appropriate to its elders have what is, for it, an already traditional aspect. It has, as it were, its feet planted on the natural sciences, its back resting against the humanistic studies, and its eyes directed toward the social sciences. And since it is this third relationship which, in this volume entirely devoted to the social sciences, must in particular be studied if we are to draw the necessary practical conclusions, the reader will forgive us for dwelling upon it at greater length.
The uncertainty surrounding the relationship between anthropology and sociology derives first from the ambiguity of sociology’s own present position. Sociology should, from its very name, be the science of society par excellence, the science that crowns—or sums up—all the other social sciences. But since the great ambitions of the Durkheim school came to naught, it nowhere now fulfills that function. In some countries, particularly in continental Europe and sometimes also in Latin America, sociology follows the tradition of a social philosophy, in which knowledge (acquired at second or third hand) of concrete research carried out by others serves merely to buttress hypotheses. On the other hand, in the Anglo-Saxon countries (whose standpoint is gradually being accepted by the Latin American and Asian countries), sociology is becoming a special discipline on the same level as the other social sciences; it studies the social relationships within present-day groups and communities on a largely experimental basis, and its methods and subjects do not, in appearance, distinguish it from anthropology, except possibly for the fact that the subjects of sociology (urban centers, agricultural organizations, national states and their component communities, and international society itself) are of quite a different magnitude from, as well as more complex than, the so-called primitive societies. Nevertheless, as anthropology tends to take an ever greater interest in these complex forms of society, it is difficult to perceive the exact difference between the two.
However, sociology is always closely linked with the observer. This is clear from our last example, for urban, rural, religious, occupational, etc.: Sociology is concerned with the observer’s society or a society of the same type. But the same applies to the other example—the comprehensive “synthesis” or philosophical sociology. Here, admittedly, the sociologist extends his investigations to much wider ranges of human experience, and he can even seek to interpret human experience as a whole. The subject extends beyond the purview of the observer, but it is always from the observer’s point of view that the sociologist tries to broaden it. In his attempt to interpret and to assign meanings, he is always first of all concerned with explaining his own society; what he applies to the generality are his own logical classifications, his own background perspectives. If a French sociologist of the twentieth century works out a general theory of social life, it will inevitably, and quite legitimately, reveal itself as the work of a twentieth-century French sociologist; whereas the anthropologist undertaking the same task will endeavor, instinctively and deliberately (although it is by no means certain that he will ever succeed), to formulate a theory applicable not only to his own fellow countrymen and contemporaries, but to the most distant native population.
While sociology seeks to advance the social science of the observer, anthropology seeks to advance that of what is observed—either by endeavoring to reproduce, in its description of strange and remote societies, the standpoint of the natives themselves, or by broadening its subject so as to cover the observer’s society but at the same time trying to evolve a frame of reference based on ethnographical experience and independent both of the observer and of what he is observing.
We see therefore why sociology can be regarded, and rightly regarded, sometimes as a special form of anthropology (this is the tendency in the United States) and sometimes as the discipline which occupies first place in the hierarchy of the social sciences; for it undoubtedly occupies not merely a particular position but a position of privilege, for the reason, with which we are familiar from the history of geometry, that the adoption of the observer’s standpoint makes it possible to discover properties which are apparently firmer in outline and certainly easier to employ than those involving an extension of the same perspective to other possible observers. Thus Euclidean geometry can be regarded as a privileged case of a metageometry which would also cover the consideration of spaces with different structures.
THE PARTICULAR TASK OF ANTHROPOLOGY
At this stage of our analysis we must stop once more to examine how we can define what anthropology, as such, has to say—the message which the proper organization of its teaching should enable it to transmit under the best possible conditions.
Objectivity. The first aim of anthropology is to be objective, to inculcate objective habits and to teach objective methods. Not simply an objectivity enabling the observer to place himself above his own personal beliefs, preferences, and prejudices; that kind of objectivity characterizes every social science, or they could not be regarded as sciences at all. The objectivity aimed at by anthropology is on a higher level: The observer must not only place himself above the values accepted by his own society or group, but must adopt certain definite methods of thought; he must reason on the basis of concepts which are valid not merely for an honest and objective observer, but for all possible observers. Thus the anthropologist does not simply set aside his own feelings; he creates new mental categories and helps to introduce notions of space and time, opposition and contradiction, which are as foreign to traditional thought as the concepts met with today in certain branches of the natural sciences. This connection between the ways in which the same problems are stated in apparently very different disciplines was admirably perceived by the great physicist Niels Bohr when he wrote: “The traditional differences of [human cultures] . . . in many ways resemble the different equivalent modes in which physical experience can be described.” 7
Yet these unrelenting efforts to achieve complete objectivity can go forward only on a level where phenomena retain a meaning for humanity and can be apprehended, in mind and feeling, by an individual. This is a very important point, for it enables us to distinguish between the type of objectivity to which anthropology aspires and that aimed at by the other social sciences, of which it can be said that it is no less rigorous, although it is on another level. The realities in which economic science and demography are interested are no less objective, but they are not expected to have a meaning so far as the subject’s own personal experience is concerned, for in the course of his historical evolution he never encounters such things as value, profitableness, marginal productivity, or maximum population. These are all abstract notions; their use by the social sciences brings the social sciences closer to the natural sciences, but in a quite different way, for in the case of anthropology the connection is more with humanistic studies. Anthropology aims to be a semeiological science, and takes as a guiding principle that of “meaning.” This is yet another reason (in addition to many others) why anthropology should maintain close contact with linguistics, where, with regard to this social fact of speech, there is the same concern to avoid separating the objective basis of language (sound) from its signifying function (meaning) .8
Totality. The second aim of anthropology is totality. It regards social life as a system of which all the aspects are organically connected. It readily admits that, in order to acquire a more thorough knowledge of certain types of phenomena, it is essential to subdivide—after the manner of the social psychologist, the jurist, the economist, and the political scientist—and it is too much concerned with the method of models (which it employs itself in certain fields, such as that of kinship) to question the validity of these particular models. But when the anthropologist endeavors to create models, it is always with the underlying motive of discovering a form that is common to the various manifestations of social life. This tendency underlies both the notion (introduced by Marcel Mauss) of the total social phenomenon, and that of pattern (an idea which has loomed large in Anglo-Saxon anthropology during recent years).
Meaningfillness. The third original feature of anthropological research—unquestionably more important than the other two—is not so easy to define. We are so accustomed to attaching negative terms to the types of society that interest the ethnologist that it is difficult for us to realize he is interested in them for positive reasons. Anthropology, we are apt to say—and this is evidenced by the title of the chairs themselves—is concerned with societies that are non-civilized, without a system of writing, and pre- or non-industrial in type. Yet behind all these qualifying negative expressions there is a positive reality: These societies are, to a far greater degree than the others, based on personal relationships, on concrete relations between individuals. It would take some time to prove this point, but, without entering into details, it will suffice here to emphasize that the small size of the societies known as “primitive” generally permits of such relationships and that, even where this is impossible because the societies of this type are too extensive or scattered, relations between individuals who are extremely remote from one another are based on the most direct kind of relationship, of which kinship is usually the prototype. Radcliffe-Brown has given us examples in Australia, which have become classic, of this process of projection.
THE CRITERION OF AUTHENTICITY
In this respect it is, rather, modern societies that should be defined in negative terms. Our relations with one another are now only occasionally and fragmentarily based upon global experience, the concrete “apprehension” of one person by another. They are largely the result of a process of indirect reconstruction, through written documents. We are no longer linked to our past by an oral tradition which implies direct contact with others (storytellers, priests, wise men, or elders), but by books amassed in libraries, books from which we endeavor—with extreme difficulty—to form a picture of their authors. And we communicate with the immense majority of our contemporaries by all kinds of intermediaries—written documents or administrative machinery—which undoubtedly vastly extend our contacts but at the same time make those contacts somewhat “unauthentic.” This has become typical of the relationship between the citizen and the public authorities.
We should like to avoid describing negatively the tremendous revolution brought about by the invention of writing. But it is essential to realize that writing, while it conferred vast benefits on humanity, did in fact deprive it of something fundamental.9 The international organizations, and particularly UNESCO, have so far entirely failed to appreciate the loss of personal autonomy that has resulted from the expansion of the indirect forms of communication (books, photographs, press, radio, etc.). But the theorists of the most modern of the social sciences (that of communication) treat this as a major question, as is shown by the following passage from Wiener’s Cybernetics: “It is no wonder that the larger communities . . . contain far less available information than the smaller communities, to say nothing of the human elements of which all communities are built up.” 10 Taking an illustration from a field which is more familiar to the social sciences, there is the dispute—well known to French political scientists—between supporters of the individual constituency poll (scrutin d’arrondissement) and supporters of voting for several unknown or little-known members out of a list drawn up by the political parties (scrutin de liste). Under the latter system, there is a great loss of information suffered by the community, owing to the substitution of abstract values for personal contacts between the electors and their representatives.
Modern societies are, of course, not completely “unauthentic.” On the contrary, if we carefully consider the points on which anthropological investigations have been brought to bear, we note that in its increasingly intensive study of modern societies, anthropology has endeavored to identify levels of authenticity within them. When the ethnologist studies a village, an enterprise, or the neighborhood of a large town, his task is facilitated by the fact that almost everyone knows everyone else. Likewise, when demographers identify, in a modern society, “isolates” of the same size as those characterizing primitive societies,11 they help the anthropologist, who thus discovers a new subject. The community surveys carried out in France under UNESCO’s auspices have been very revealing here; those conducting the surveys (some of whom had anthropological training) felt completely at home in a village of 500 inhabitants, the study of which necessitated no change in their classical methods; whereas in an average-sized town they felt they were confronted by an entirely new problem. Why? Because 30,000 persons cannot constitute a society in the same way as 500 persons. In the former case, the main communication is not between persons; the social reality of “senders” and “receivers” (to use two words current in communication terminology) is hidden behind the complex system of “codes and relays.” 12
In the future, it may be recognized that anthropology’s most important contribution to social science is to have introduced, if unknowingly, this fundamental distinction between two types of social existence: a way of life recognized at the outset as traditional and archaic and characteristic of “authentic” societies and a more modern form of existence, from which the first-named type is not absent but where groups that are not completely, or are imperfectly, “authentic” are organized within a much larger and specifically “unauthentic” system.
But while this distinction explains and justifies the increasing concern of anthropology with the types of “authentic” relations that persist or appear in modern societies, it shows where the limits of that science’s investigations lie. For though it is true that a Melanesian tribe and a French village are, grosso modo, social entities of the same type, this ceases to be true if we start to work outward toward larger units. Hence the error which those who favor “national character” studies fall into if they wish to work solely as anthropologists; for by unconsciously confusing forms of social life that cannot in fact be identified, they can achieve only one of two results—to consecrate either the worst forms of prejudice or the most shallow abstractions.
THE ORGANIZATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES
We perceive the singular crossroads of disciplines at which anthropology stands. In order to resolve the problem of objectivity, which is imposed upon it by the need of a common language wherewith to communicate heterogeneous social experience, anthropology is beginning to seek the help of mathematics and symbolic logic. Our current vocabulary, which is the product of our own social and mental categories, is in fact inadequate to describe markedly different types of sociological experience. We must resort to symbols, like the physicist when he wishes to show what is common between, say, the corpuscular theory and the wave theory of light; here, in the language of the ordinary man, the two notions are contradictory, but, since science regards them as equally “real,” it is necessary to employ new symbols in order to be able to proceed from one to the other.13
Second, as a “semeiological” science, anthropology turns toward linguistics—first, because only linguistic knowledge provides the key to a system of logical categories and of moral values different from the observer’s own; second, because linguistics, more than any other science, can teach him how to pass from the consideration of elements in themselves devoid of meaning to consideration of a semantic system and show him how the latter can be built on the basis of the former. This, perhaps, is primarily the problem of language, but, beyond and through it, the problem of culture in general.
Third, alive to the interrelations of the various types of sociaf phenomena, anthropology aims at simultaneous consideration of their economic, legal, political, moral, esthetic, and religious aspects; consequently, it is careful to note developments in the other social sciences, and especially in such of them—viz., human geography, social and economic history, and sociology—as share with it this total perspective.
Last, being essentially concerned with those forms of social life—of which the so-called primitive societies are merely the most readily identifiable and most developed examples—whose degree of authenticity is estimated according to the scope and variety of the concrete relations between individuals, anthropology maintains, in this respect, the closest contact with psychology (general and social).
There can be no question of overwhelming students with the enormous mass of knowledge which would be necessary in order to do full justice to all these standpoints. The mere realization, however, of this complexity leads to a number of practical consequences.
(1) Anthropology has become too diversified and technical a subject to be taught in one-year courses, generally entitled “Introduction to Anthropology” (or something similar) and usually consisting of vague comments on clan organization, polygamy, and totemism. It would be dangerous to imagine that such superficial ideas can be used to provide effective training for young men who, as missionaries, administrators, diplomats, soldiers, etc., are destined to live in contact with populations very different from their own. An introduction to anthropology no more produces an anthropologist, even an amateur one, than an introduction to physics produces a physicist, or even an assistant physicist.
In this respect, anthropologists bear heavy responsibilities. Having been ignored or disdained for so long, they often feel flattered when asked to provide a smattering of anthropology as a round-off to some form of technical training. They should firmly resist this temptation. There is of course no question of turning everyone into an anthropologist; but if doctors, jurists, and missionaries must acquire certain notions of anthropology, it should be through a process of very thorough technical training in the few branches of anthropological research directly relating to the exercise of their professions and to the particular areas of the world which they propose to serve.
(2) Whatever the number of courses envisaged, it is impossible to train anthropologists in one year. Three years would seem to be the minimum period within which complete instruction, absorbing the whole of the student’s time, can be given; and this minimum should, for the purpose of certain professional qualifications, be increased to four or five years. Consequently it seems essential that in all universities anthropology should cease to be regarded, as it too often is (especially, for example, in France) merely as a complementary subject. Special diplomas should be conferred, up to the highest university levels, on those who have successfully completed full courses devoted exclusively to anthropology.
(3) Even when extended over this period of time, the subject matter of anthropology is too complex not to involve specialized studies. There is, of course, a general form of training which all anthropology students could receive during their first year and which would permit them to choose their subsequent specialized work judiciously. Without wishing to suggest a rigid program, we think that the subjects to be studied would necessarily comprise the basic principles of physical, social, and cultural anthropology; prehistory; the history of ethnological theory; and general linguistics.
Specialization in each subject should begin in the second year: (a) physical anthropology, accompanied by comparative anatomy, biology, and physiology; (b) social anthropology, together with economic and social history, social psychology, and linguistics; (c) cultural anthropology, with technology, geography, and prehistory.
In the third year (and perhaps during the second), this systematic specialization would be accompanied by “regional” specialization, which would include, in addition to regional prehistory, archaeology, and geography, a sound training in one or more of the languages used in the area chosen by the investigator.
(4) The study of anthropology, general or regional, involves extensive reading. We are thinking not so much of textbooks (which can complement but never replace verbal instruction) or of works on theory (which it is not essential to use before the final years of training) as of monographs, i.e., books which enable the student to “relive” experience that has been acquired on the spot and to accumulate a considerable amount of factual knowledge, which alone can guard him against hasty generalizations and simplifications. Throughout the entire training, therefore, the theoretical and practical courses would be complemented by compulsory reading, at the rate of some thousands of pages per year; this reading would be checked by various procedures (written summaries, oral précis, etc.) which we cannot describe in detail here. This implies (a) that every institute or school of anthropology must have a library containing copies, in duplicate or triplicate, of a considerable number of works; (b) that, in present circumstances, the student will have to possess, at the outset, adequate knowledge of at least one of the foreign languages which have been most frequently used in recent years by authors of anthropological works.
We hesitate, indeed, to recommend a policy of systematic translations; the technical vocabulary of anthropology is at present in too chaotic a state. Each author tends to use his own terminology, and there is no firm agreement on the meaning of the principal terms. Consequently, it is most unlikely that a country which does not produce, on a large scale, anthropological works in its own national language will possess specialized translators capable of rendering the exact terminological meaning and the subtleties of thought of a foreign author. UNESCO cannot, therefore, be pressed too strongly to carry out its project for the compilation of international scientific vocabularies; this project, once completed, might enable us to be less categorical on the matter of translations.
Last, it is to be desired that use should be made of such media as photographic slides, documentary films, and linguistic or musical recordings. The recent establishment of various institutions—especially that of the International Center for Ethnographic Documentary Films, decided upon by the Fourth World Congress of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (Vienna, 1952)—is an encouraging development.
(5) These three years of theoretical training could be usefully followed by a practical course lasting for one or even two years, at least in the case of those intending to practice anthropology professionally (teaching or research); but this raises some extremely complex problems.
TEACHING AND RESEARCH
The Training of Teachers. We shall first consider the case of future teachers of anthropology. Whatever the university qualifications required for teaching (in general, the doctoral degree or equivalent accomplishments), no one should be entitled to teach anthropology unless he has carried out considerable field research. It is sheer illusion that anthropology can be taught purely theoretically, with the help of a complete (or usually abridged) edition of The Golden Bough and other works, whatever their intrinsic merits may be. Those combating this assertion by referring to the distinguished scholars who have never done field work (Sir James Frazer, in answer to those who raised the question, declared: “Heaven forbid!”) should remember that Levy-Bruhl, for instance, held, not a chair of anthropology or any related chair—in his day, no such chairs existed at the French universities—but a chair of philosophy; in future, nothing will prevent pure theorists from receiving chairs of disciplines bordering on anthropology: history of religions, comparative sociology, etc. Nevertheless, the teaching of anthropology must be reserved for eyeivitnesses. There is nothing radical in this standpoint; it is adopted de facto (if not always de jure) in all countries where anthropology has attained some measure of development.
The Training of Research Workers. The problem of training is much less simple with regard to future members of the anthropological profession, i.e., the research workers.14 Would it not be in the nature of a vicious circle to require them to carry out research before receiving the university training which qualifies them for such research? Here we can usefully refer to what we have already said, by way of clarifying the very special position of anthropology. We pointed out that its fundamental feature and chief merit is that it endeavors to identify, in all forms of social life, what we termed the level of authenticity, i.e., either complete societies (most frequently found among the so-called “primitive” societies) or forms of social existence (found even in modern or “civilized” societies) where relations between individuals and the system of social relationships combine to form a whole. These special features have one immediate consequence: Such forms of social existence cannot be apprehended simply from the outside—the investigator must be able to make a personal reconstruction of the synthesis characterizing them; he must not merely analyze their elements, but apprehend them as a whole in the form of a personal experience—his own.
Thus we recognize a profound reason, associated with the very nature of the discipline and the distinctive features of its subject, why the anthropologist needs the experience of field work. It represents for him, not the goal of his profession, or a completion of his schooling, or yet a technical apprenticeship—but a crucial stage of his education, prior to which he may possess miscellaneous knowledge that will never form a whole. After he engages in field work his knowledge will acquire an organic unity and a meaning it did not previously possess. The position is comparable to that in psychoanalysis. The principle is universally recognized today that the professional psychoanalyst must have a specific and irreplaceable practical background, that of analysis itself; hence all the regulations require that every would-be psychoanalyst be psychoanalyzed himself. For the anthropologist, field work represents the equivalent of this unique experience. As in the case of psychoanalysis, this experience may or may not be successful, and no examination, whether competitive or not, can prove conclusively whether it is. Only experienced members of the profession, whose work shows that they have themselves passed the test, can decide if and when a candidate for the anthropological profession has, as a result of field work, accomplished that inner revolution that will really make him into a new man.
From these considerations several consequences flow.
First, the exercise of the anthropological profession—which is full of problems, since it involves a “foreign” person (the investigator) examining an environment whose inner structure and position in the world render it particularly unstable and fragile—demands preliminary qualifications that can be obtained only as a result of field work.
Second, this situation, which theoretically implies a contradiction, is closely akin to two others—that of psychoanalysis, as we have just seen, and that of medical studies in general, where the non-resident and resident systems provide apprenticeship in diagnosis through the practice of diagnosis itself.
Third, these two other cases we have just mentioned show that success can be achieved only through personal contact between the student and an acknowledged practitioner—contact sufficiently close and extensive for the studies to bear the imprint of an inevitably “arbitrary” factor (that is, the evaluation of the “boss” in the case of medical studies and of the “supervisory” analyst in the case of psychoanalysis). This “arbitrary” factor can be reduced in various ways, but it is difficult to see how it can be completely eliminated from the study of anthropology. Here, too, an older member of the profession must personally assist the young research worker in his training. Close contact with someone who has already undergone a change psychologically not only expedites a similar change on the part of the student; it enables the person assisting him to ascertain if, and at what stage, this has occurred.
Let us now consider the practical ways of providing the future research worker with “supervised” field work. It seems that there are three ways:
Practical Work. This type of work is done under the guidance of teachers in charge of the last years of instruction, or under that of assistants. Its value is relative. Without wishing to advise new institutions, or countries lacking appropriate systems, against it, we would emphasize its provisional nature. Practical work supplementing theoretical training always tends to appear as a form of drudgery, or as spurious experience. A paltry three weeks spent in a village or engaged in some kind of enterprise cannot create that psychological revolution which marks the decisive turning point in the training of the anthropologist or even give the student a faint idea of it. Indeed, these hasty practical courses are sometimes actually harmful; they allow for only the most summary and superficial methods of research; they often amount to a kind of anti-training. However useful the Scout movement may be for adolescents, it is impossible to confuse professional training at the higher educational level with forms—even advanced forms—of supervised play.
Outside Practical Training. As an alternative, there might be lengthier practical courses in those institutes, institutions, or other establishments which, without being specifically anthropological, function on the level of those interpersonal relationships and global situations which, as we have already seen, constitute the choicest field for anthropology: municipal administration, social services, vocational guidance centers, etc. This solution, compared with the previous one, would have the immense advantage of dispensing with imitation experimental work. On the other hand, it would have the disadvantage of placing students under the control and responsibility of heads of agencies who may have had no training in anthropology and who therefore may be unable to demonstrate the theoretical bearing of daily experience. This particular solution is, therefore, more or less an idea for the future, to be used once training in anthropology is recognized as having a general value and when a substantial proportion of anthropologists are attached to establishments or agencies of this type.
Anthropological Museums. At the beginning of this discussion we referred to the role of anthropological museums as an extension of the field for research. The museographer enters into close contact with the objects: A spirit of humility is inculcated in him by all the small tasks (unpacking, cleaning, maintenance, etc.) he has to perform. He develops a keen sense of the concrete through the classification, identification, and analysis of the objects in the various collections. He establishes indirect contact with the native environment by means of tools and comes to know this environment and the ways in which to handle it correctly: Texture, form, and, in many cases, smell, repeatedly experienced, make him instinctively familiar with distant forms of life and activities. Finally, he acquires for the various externalizations of human genius that respect which cannot fail to be inspired in him by the constant appeals to his taste, intellect, and knowledge made by apparently insignificant objects.
All this constitutes a wealth and concentration of experience which should not be underestimated. And it explains, not only why the Institut d’Ethnologie of the University of Paris attaches such importance to the hospitality it receives from the Musée de l’Homme, but also why the American report recommends, as a normal situation which is obtaining more and more throughout the United States, that every department of anthropology have attached to it a museum at the university itself.
However, it seems that even more can be done in this direction. Anthropological museums were long regarded in the same light as other establishments of the same type, i.e., as series of galleries for the preservation of objects—inert things fossilized, as it were, inside their showcases and completely detached from the societies that produced them, the only link between them and their originators being the missions periodically dispatched to the field to procure further material for the collections; they were mute witnesses of forms of existence that for the visitor were unknown and inaccessible. The evolution of anthropology as a science and the changes undergone by the modern world make modification of this conception essential. As already shown, anthropology is becoming increasingly aware of its true subject, which consists of certain forms of man’s social existence—which, though possibly more easily recognizable in societies differing markedly from the observer’s, exist just as much in his own. As anthropology deepens its reflections on its subject and improves its methods, it feels more and more that it is “going back home.” Although it assumes very different forms, which may not be easily identifiable, it would be wrong to imagine that this tendency is peculiar to American anthropology. In France and in India, community studies carried out with UNESCO’s assistance have been directed by the Musée de l’Homme (Paris) and the Anthropological Museum of Calcutta. The Laboratoire d’Ethnographie Frangaise is attached to the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires. The Laboratoire d’Ethnographie Sociale is housed in the Musée de l’Homme, and, despite its name, it is devoted not to the sociology of Melanesia or Africa but to that of the Paris region. In all these cases the purpose should be, not merely to collect objects, but to understand men; not so much to classify dried remains—as in herbariums—as to describe and analyze forms of existence with which the observer is closely and actively in touch.
The same tendency is found in physical anthropology, which is no longer satisfied, as in the past, to assemble measurements and pieces of bone. It studies racial phenomena as revealed in living persons; it studies the softer parts of the body as well as the skeleton and gives no less attention to physiological activity than to simple anatomical structure. Consequently, it is mainly interested in the actual processes of differentiation in all representatives of the human species and is not content merely to obtain “ossified” results (literally as well as figuratively) among the types most easily distinguishable from that of the observer.
Moreover, the expansion of Western civilization, the development of communications, and the frequency of travel that characterizes the modern world have all helped to make the human species “fluid.” Today there are practically no such things as isolated cultures; to study a given culture, as a rule it is no longer necessary to travel half-way around the world and “explore.” The population of a great city like New York, London, Paris, Calcutta, or Melbourne includes representatives of highly differing cultures; this is well known to linguists, who are astonished to encounter, in these circumstances, persons qualified to inform them about rare and remote languages, some of which had been thought to be practically extinct.
Formerly, anthropological museums sent men traveling in one direction to obtain objects that seemed to be drifting in the opposite direction. Today, however, men travel in all directions; and, as this increase in contacts leads to the “homogenization” of material culture (which for primitive societies usually means extinction), it can be said that, at least in some respects, men tend to replace objects. Anthropological museums must note this vast change. Their task of preserving objects is likely to continue—though not to be expanded. But while it is becoming increasingly difficult to collect bows and arrows, drums and necklaces, baskets and statues of divinities, it is becoming easier to make a systematic study of languages, beliefs, attitudes, and personalities. How many communities of Southeast Asia, North and sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, etc., do we not find represented in Paris by visitors or residents (whether families or small groups)?
THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY
From this standpoint, anthropological museums are offered not merely possibilities for research (thus becoming, to a large extent, laboratories),15 but also new tasks of practical importance. For these representatives of peripheral cultures, unintegrated or ill-integrated, have much to give the ethnographer—language, oral traditions, beliefs, a conception of the world, an attitude toward persons and things. They are, however, also often at grips with real and distressing problems—isolation, separation from their customary environment, unemployment, incomprehension of the milieu in which they have temporarily or permanently been planted, nearly always against their will or at least without knowing what awaited them. No one is better qualified than the ethnologist to help them overcome these difficulties. First, the ethnologist knows their original environment; he has studied their language and culture at first hand, and has a sympathetic feeling for them. Second, the method peculiar to anthropology is marked by that “distantiation” which characterizes the contacts between representatives of very different cultures. The anthropologist is the astronomer of the social sciences: His task is to discover a meaning for configurations which, owing to their size and remoteness, are very different from those within the observer’s immediate purview. Consequently, there is no reason to limit the anthropologist’s role to the analysis and reduction of these external distances; he can also be called upon to take part, together with specialists of other disciplines, in the study of phenomena which exist within his own society but which are also characterized by “distantiation,” either because they concern only one section of the group and not the whole of it, or because, even though they are of an over-all nature, they are deeply rooted in the unconscious. Instances of the former case are prostitution and juvenile delinquency and, of the latter, resistance to food or health changes.
Thus, if anthropology’s rightful place in the social sciences were more generally recognized and its practical function more clearly identified than it is at present, a number of fundamental problems would be well on the way to solution:
(1) From the practical standpoint, a social function would be performed which is today much neglected. As an example—the problems raised by the immigration of Puerto Ricans to New York or of North Africans to Paris; no general policy is followed in these matters, and various administrative agencies (often poorly qualified to deal with them) fruitlessly refer them to and fro.
(2) New prospects would be opened up for anthropology. We have not yet considered this problem, but its solution is obviously implied in all that we have said above. If it is to be solved rightly, it is not enough to re-emphasize that every person—colonial administrator, soldier, missionary, diplomat, etc.—called upon to live in contact with a society very different from his own must receive general or at least specialized training in anthropology. It must also be remembered that certain essential functions of modern societies, made more involved by the increasing mobility of the world’s population, are inadequately performed, if indeed performed at all; that this gives rise to difficulties which often become very acute, creating misunderstanding, fostering racial or social prejudices, and compromising the cause of peace; that anthropology is today the only discipline dealing with social “distantiation”; that it possesses considerable theoretical and practical resources which enable it to train specialists; and, above all, that it is always available and ready to engage in tasks which humanity cannot afford to neglect.16
(3) Last, and from the more limited standpoint of this study, it is obvious that the expansion of anthropological museums into laboratories for the study of social phenomena difficult to analyze or, to use a mathematical expression, the “borderline” forms of social relationships, would be the most suitable solution to the problem of anthropologists’ professional training. For the new laboratories would permit students to spend their last years of studies as residents or non-residents, under the direction of teachers who would also be resident, as in the case of medical studies. The twofold aspect, theoretical and practical, of the studies would be justified by the new tasks entrusted to the profession. For anthropology would plead in vain for that recognition to which its outstanding achievements in the realm of theory otherwise entitle it if, in this ailing and troubled world of ours, it did not first endeavor to prove its usefulness.
NOTES
1. We refer here, of course, to the volume in which this chapter originally appeared.
2. American Anthropologist, LIII, No. 4, Part 1 (1951), pp. 465-89.
3. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (London: 1871), I, 1.
4. G. Sergi, "Terminologia e divisione delle Scienze dell’Uomo; i resultati di un’inchiesta internazionale," Rivista di Antropologia, XXXV (1944-1947)
5. It is in this way that the problem is raised by the Institut International d’Archéocivilisation, directed by A. Varagnac.
6. As envisaged, on the other hand, by the Laboratoire d’Ethnographie Française and the Musée National Français des Arts et Traditions Populaires.
7. Niels Bohr, "Natural Philosophy and Human Culture," Nature, CXLIII 1939).
8. Just after writing these lines, we came across very similar views expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre. After criticizing an out-of-date sociology, he adds: "The sociology of primitive peoples is never open to this criticism. There, we study meaningful wholes [ensembles signifiants]." Les Temps Modernes (October-November, 1952), p. 729, n 1.
9. Regarding this point, see C. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Paris: 1955), Chapter XXVIII.
10. Pages 188-9. Speaking generally, I should say that all of pages 181-9 of that book would deserve inclusion in extenso in UNESCO’s Constitution.
11. J. Sutter and L. Tabah, "Les Notions d’isolat et de population minimum," Population, VI, No. 3 (1951).
12. See on this subject N. Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (Boston: 1950).
13. The reader wishing to delve deeper into these remarkable analogies between the social and the natural sciences should consult the excellent book by Pierre Auger, L’Homme microscopique (Paris: 1952).
14. With regard to these questions, the reader can profitably consult the special number of American Anthropologist devoted to a symposium: "The Training of the Professional Anthropologist," LIV, No. 3 (1952). The problems we deal with here are discussed in that symposium with reference to the situation in the United States.
15. In this respect it will be noted that since 1937 two-thirds of the buildings at present housing the Musée de l’Homme (Paris) have been given over to laboratory work, and only one-third to exhibition galleries. It is this concept—revolutionary at the time—which permitted the establishment of a close association between museographic and educational activities; an illustration of this is the housing, already mentioned, of the Musée de l’Homme and the Institut d’Ethnologie in the same building.
16. Such suggestions are often criticized because they threaten to turn the anthropologist into a "servant of the social order." Even if this threat is real, it seems to me preferable to standing aloof, because the anthropologist’s participation results at least in an understanding of the facts, and truth has a power of its own. I hope that the reader will not misinterpret my suggestions. Personally, I do not care for applied anthropology, and I question its scientific value. But those who criticize it in principle should bear in mind that the first book of Capital was partly based on the reports of British factory inspectors, to whom Marx in his preface pays a glowing tribute: "We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions of enquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory inspectors, her medical reporters on public health, her commissioners of enquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters." Capital, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: Modern Library, 1906), p. 14. The italics are mine.
Evidently Marx had no thought of censuring those "applied anthropologists" of the time for being servants of the established order. Yet they were; but what does it matter to us in view of the facts they uncovered?