An Appraisal of Modern Social Anthropology

Abstract

Modern social anthroplogy offers a diversity of theoretical views. Some may be a product of what is popularly known as the "generation gap," but which at times resembles rather an "establishment gap." Some are a belated intellectual response to the appeal of Marxian answers to the problems of a capitalist, excolonialist world. But most of the diversity is a logical de­ velopment from past work. This laid a foundation of hypotheses and fi eld data for the understanding of many types of social thought and behavior, and offered theories about the constitution and operations of society in gen­ eral. But the foundations have been shown to be less solid than was imagined at the time they were laid down, with many weaknesses and gaps, and the theories to be less cogent and more open to the critical scrutiny of alternative assumptions and methods of inquiry. I think Edwin Ardener's (1) flat dis­ tinction between those who perceive paradigmatic structures and those who perceive only syntagmatic structures is simplicist and preemptive-akin to the separation of the enlightened from the rest in some scheme of aca­ demic salvation. But he is right in arguing that nowadays monographs which used to appear exhaustive now seem selective, and interpretations which once looked full of insight noW seem dull and lifeless. Yet the re­ verse is also sometimes true. Some essays which once were ignored are now thought to be full of wisdom, as the revival of Robert Hertz's work (17) has shown. (Among my fancies for the Revival Stakes would be Richard Thurnwald.) I am not inclined to level at anthropologists of today the re­ proach which Plato is said to have leveled at Aristotle-that he was acting like a foal that kicks its own mother (16). But I do think that there is intel­ lectual as well as institutional continuity between past and present social anthropology.