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Not Really a View from Without: The Relations of Social Anthropology and Sociology

J. D. Y. Peel

in British Sociology Seen from Without and Within

This chapter argues that the histories of social anthropology and sociology in Britain have been so closely intertwined and overlapping that they cannot really be seen as external to one another at ... More

This chapter argues that the histories of social anthropology and sociology in Britain have been so closely intertwined and overlapping that they cannot really be seen as external to one another at all. The two disciplines have common origins in the social thought of the Enlightenment. This was an enquiry into the character of the emergent, modern society of contemporary Europe, with a view to realizing the conditions for human emancipation from tyranny, ignorance, and poverty. By the early 1950s, sociology at the London School of Economics started to acquire the coherence and momentum that would power its lift-off in the 1960s. Many sociologists and anthropologists were attracted by the new analytical possibilities offered by structuralism, but they were also drawn by external circumstances to address issues of social change. The resurgence of Marxism, as much a feature of the late 1960s and 1970s as the rise of structuralism, was much more a response to events in the world than a movement internal to the realm of ideas.Less

Sociology Before 1950

A. H. Halsey

in A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society

Before 1950 sociology in Britain scarcely existed. The subject was almost exclusively confined to the London School of Economics. But there were at least a dozen well‐known names. Spencer, Booth, and ... More

Before 1950 sociology in Britain scarcely existed. The subject was almost exclusively confined to the London School of Economics. But there were at least a dozen well‐known names. Spencer, Booth, and Rowntree had no academic connections. Three were Scots—Geddes, Branford, and McIver: of the others, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Westermaark, Hobhouse, Beveridge, Ginsberg, T.H. Marshall, Mannheim, and Carr‐Saunders were connected with LSE. Barbara Wootton was at Bedford College, London. Each one is treated here briefly and biographically. There is briefly also, a comparison with social anthropology up to 1950. No equivalent to the Parsonian school of American functionalism emerged: there was no Weber circle, no Durkheimian, or Chicagoan school established.Less

1956: The End of Community: The Quest for the English Middletown

Mike Savage

in Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method

This chapter examines how a new breed of social scientists in Great Britain during the 1950s sought to define an ordinary, average, national society. It suggests that outside influences were to be ... More

This chapter examines how a new breed of social scientists in Great Britain during the 1950s sought to define an ordinary, average, national society. It suggests that outside influences were to be vital in allowing established and assumed national characteristics to be understood in a new, apparently social light, and argues that social anthropology was effective in developing a demoralised social science. The chapter also shows how the relations between sociology and social anthropology fractured in the early 1960s over the issue of change, as sociology seized the banner of the new as a means of justifying its distinctive expertise, thus consigning anthropology a subordinate role.Less

John Arundel Barnes 1918–2010

ALAN BARNARD

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 172, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, X

John Barnes, an intellectual and a scholar who contributed significantly to the development of theoretical and methodological approaches in both sociology and social anthropology, was a Fellow of the ... More

John Barnes, an intellectual and a scholar who contributed significantly to the development of theoretical and methodological approaches in both sociology and social anthropology, was a Fellow of the British Academy. Obituary by Alan Barnard.Less

Introduction: Sometimes the Bus Does Wait

Jerome H. Barkow

in Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for social scientists

Sociology and social-cultural anthropology have trailed other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences in engaging with the evolution revolution. This is in part because of the horrific ... More

Sociology and social-cultural anthropology have trailed other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences in engaging with the evolution revolution. This is in part because of the horrific misuse in the past of Darwinian theories; in part because of an adherence to a Cartesian folk psychology in which body but not mind can be produced by evolution; and in part because of a misunderstanding of Durkheimian views of psychology and biology. The vertical-compatible approach makes it clear that evolutionary and social science accounts, being at different levels of organization, can never be in competition with one another. An evolutionary perspective is not the antithesis of social constructionism but, in fact, requires it and easily accommodates the frequent maladaptations found in social behavior. An evolutionary praxis can explain why, to the dismay of “moral mission” social scientists, yesterday's good guys are so often today's bad guys.Less

Emrys Jones 1920–2006

Ron Johnston

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 153 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, VII

Emrys Jones (1920–2006), a Fellow of the British Academy, was a geographer who, together with his elder brother, Alun, was raised in the Cynon Valley mining community of Aberaman in South Wales. In ... More

Emrys Jones (1920–2006), a Fellow of the British Academy, was a geographer who, together with his elder brother, Alun, was raised in the Cynon Valley mining community of Aberaman in South Wales. In 1938, he entered University College Wales, Aberystwyth to study geography. Social anthropology and prehistoric archaeology dominated the teaching programme he experienced – with physical geography largely taught in the Department of Geology. The work on the Teify valley, Tregaron and Utica – all completed if not published by 1950 – together provide a clear view of the underlying philosophy of human geography that Jones sustained throughout his career. He also wrote papers on rural settlement patterns. At the London School of Economics, Jones focused on social geography. The last of his major projects – which occupied much of his retirement – was his study of the Welsh in London.Less

Isaac Schapera 1905–2003

Adam Kuper

in Proceedings of the British Academy Volume 130, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, IV

Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, spent the second half of his long life in London but remained very much a South African. His parents immigrated to South Africa at the ... More

Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, spent the second half of his long life in London but remained very much a South African. His parents immigrated to South Africa at the turn of the century from what is now Belarus, and settled in Garies, a small town in the semi-desert district of Little Namaqualand, in the Northern Cape. As an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, Schapera was introduced to ‘British social anthropology’ by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, one of the founding fathers of the discipline, the other being Bronislaw Malinowski. He then became one of the first members of Malinowski’s post-graduate seminar at the London School of Economics. Towards the end of his career, Schapera preferred to describe himself as an ethnographer rather than as an anthropologist. His research in the 1930s and 1940s was distinguished by a concern with ‘social change’, a focus endorsed in South Africa by Malinowski in London.Less

Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine and Money

Marjorie Topley

Jean DeBernardi (ed.)

in Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine and Money

This book collects the published articles of Dr. Marjorie Topley, who was a pioneer in the field of social anthropology in the postwar period. Her ethnographic research in Singapore and Hong Kong ... More

This book collects the published articles of Dr. Marjorie Topley, who was a pioneer in the field of social anthropology in the postwar period. Her ethnographic research in Singapore and Hong Kong sets a high standard for urban anthropology. Dr. Topley's publications reflect her training in British social anthropology, with its focus on fieldwork and detailed empirical observation. She was among the first to refine and extend those methods in the 1950s, adapting them to the study of modernizing urban settings like Singapore and Hong Kong. Her ethnographic research on the Great Way of Former Heaven sectarian movement and Cantonese women's vegetarian halls in Singapore in the 1950s was an early contribution to the study of sub-cultural groups in a complex urban society, and she asked insightful questions about the relationship between religion, secularism, and modernity. She also broke new ground in the field of Chinese medical anthropology.Less

An Anthropological Laboratory: Ethnographic Research, Imperial Administration, and Magical Knowledge

in Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950

This chapter evaluates the changing attitudes of colonial officials to formal anthropological research and of anthropologists to empire and its apparatus of rule. The synergies and antagonisms of ... More

This chapter evaluates the changing attitudes of colonial officials to formal anthropological research and of anthropologists to empire and its apparatus of rule. The synergies and antagonisms of interactions between anthropologists and officials, especially in the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (IIALC), the African Research Survey, and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia shed light on how social anthropology ultimately attained a dominant position in research programs related to African development. Bronislaw Malinowski encouraged colonial and African studies to shed common prejudices toward the societies the British governed. Combined with the creation of the Scientific Council of Africa South of the Sahara in 1950, the Colonial Social Science Research Council (CSSRC) helped cement a transdisciplinary approach to human problems, with anthropology often at the helm.Less

How It All Began

M.N. Srinivas

in The Remembered Village

This chapter describes how the author's study of Rampura, a multi-caste village in Mysore, began in 1945–46 when he was a doctoral student in social anthropology at Oxford. According to ... More

This chapter describes how the author's study of Rampura, a multi-caste village in Mysore, began in 1945–46 when he was a doctoral student in social anthropology at Oxford. According to Radcliffe-Brown, the author's teacher, it is a fact that extant studies did not give an idea of day-to-day social relations between members of diverse castes living in a small community. An important social process in Mysore, if not in South India as a whole, is the urbanization of Brahmins. This process is yet to be studied, and its many consequences and implications understood.Less

Introduction

PETER MARSHALL

in Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England

This introductory chapter surveys the recent scholarship in the social history of death, drawing attention to a relative neglect of studies on attitudes towards the dead. It discusses the benefits ... More

This introductory chapter surveys the recent scholarship in the social history of death, drawing attention to a relative neglect of studies on attitudes towards the dead. It discusses the benefits and limitations of social anthropology for the study of this theme, and places the book's argument in the context of the current historiography of the English Reformation, and of revisionist and post-revisionist approaches to the assessment of religious change in Tudor and early Stuart England.Less

The Self, Agency, and Causation

G. E. R. Lloyd

in Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind

This chapter examines the notions of the self, agency, and causation. It first sketches out some of the major difficulties that relate to these three concepts and their interrelations, citing the ... More

This chapter examines the notions of the self, agency, and causation. It first sketches out some of the major difficulties that relate to these three concepts and their interrelations, citing the apparent divergences that exist between the reports of social anthropologists on the one hand, and the findings of developmental psychologists on the other. It then turns to ancient civilizations to see what light their experiences can throw on the issues. Here it is worth reflecting on the diversity of views that can be found between different periods and even within writers of the same period.Less

The Making of a Social Anthropologist

David A. Varel

in The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought

The third chapter evaluates the formal graduate training in anthropology of Allison Davis and his wife Elizabeth Stubbs Davis. From 1931 to 1932, the couple attended Harvard College and Radcliffe ... More

The third chapter evaluates the formal graduate training in anthropology of Allison Davis and his wife Elizabeth Stubbs Davis. From 1931 to 1932, the couple attended Harvard College and Radcliffe College, respectively, where they both studied under racial taxonomist Earnest Hooton. Allison was especially influenced by social anthropologist Lloyd Warner, who was in the process of developing an ambitious comparative sociology of modern civilizations. The following year, Allison and Elizabeth enrolled in the PhD program in anthropology at the London School of Economics. There, Allison studied under social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, but he was most influenced by social biologist Lancelot Hogben, a leader in the fight against scientific racism. Growing out of his collaboration with Hogben, Allison published his first social scientific article. Allison and Elizabeth also studied briefly at the University of Berlin in the spring of 1933, but Adolf Hitler’s rise to power cut the trip short. Overall, this chapter makes clear how Davis shifted from the arts to the social sciences in order to become more relevant to black people’s needs. He did so by contributing to the environmentalist trends within social science that counteracted scientific racism.Less

Moral Theology, Moral Philosophy, Social Anthropology, and the State We Are In: On (the Lack of) Everyday Ethics

Michael Banner

in The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human

This book outlines an everyday Christian ethics: an ethics which Christianly imagines the fundamental moments of the human life course and in dialogue with alternative imaginations of human being. ... More

This book outlines an everyday Christian ethics: an ethics which Christianly imagines the fundamental moments of the human life course and in dialogue with alternative imaginations of human being. This chapter argues that the challenge of providing such an ethics is the greater because of deficient and dominant self‐understandings in moral theology and moral philosophy, and consequent misrelations between these disciplines and social anthropology. It suggests that moral theology is misconceived as essentially an ethics of hard cases, that moral philosophy generally fails to reckon with moral practice, and so itself contributes to moral theology's misdirection, and that social anthropology provides a more promising partner for a more adequate Christian ethics. The chapter closes with a treatment of the Mérode Altarpiece as inviting the viewer, as this book invites the reader, to imagine human life in the light of the life of Christ.Less

Philosophy and Anthropology: With Lefort and Descombes

Marcel Hénaff

in The Philosophers' Gift: Reexamining Reciprocity

This chapter discusses the need to problematize more precisely the possible relationships between philosophy and social anthropology from the perspective of gift exchanges. In France, few ... More

This chapter discusses the need to problematize more precisely the possible relationships between philosophy and social anthropology from the perspective of gift exchanges. In France, few philosophers have attempted this effort. Two of them seem especially interesting for this discussion because of their original relationship to Mauss's The Gift: Claude Lefort and Vincent Descombes. Their perspectives are very different. Lefort supports his reflection on the political realm and history based on the social sciences, whereas Descombes questions the validity of the concepts of those sciences, beginning with the concepts of society and social relationship. The question of the social bond is at the core of Lefort's and Descombes's inquiries. It is not enough to ask what unites a group, preserves its unity, and makes it view itself as forming a unique whole. Lefort examines whether seeking this bond entirely absorbs the energy of the members of the group and determines their choices and actions, while Descombes attempts to answer a more general question: How can an individual subject relate to another and view this relationship as being as evident and fundamental as their own existence? It is based on these kinds of questions that the exchange practices of traditional societies are chosen as providing the very model of the strong bond and the specific level that those authors seek to define.Less

Introduction

Fernanda Pirie

in The Anthropology of Law

This introductory chapter addresses the question of why anthropologists should explore the nature of law. The discussions cover law as an anthropological subject; law as a polythetic category; law in ... More

This introductory chapter addresses the question of why anthropologists should explore the nature of law. The discussions cover law as an anthropological subject; law as a polythetic category; law in legal anthropology; legalism; legal theory; and an anthropology of law. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less