History and Theory in Anthropology

Citation

Barnard, A. (2021). History and Theory in Anthropology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Summary

The second edition has fourteen chapters over about 200 pages of main text, followed by two appendices (dates of birth and death, and a glossary of nearly forty pages), references and an index. Cambridge's chapter abstracts show that most chapters are short, between about eight and twenty pages. The book is organised mainly as a sequence of schools, introduced in roughly historical order, and the summaries below follow the publisher's abstracts.

Chapter 1: Visions of Anthropology

The opening chapter introduces the "four fields" approach associated in North America with Franz Boas (biological, archaeological, linguistic and cultural) and notes that this book is basically about cultural anthropology. It also introduces the divisions between ethnography and theory, the idea of a paradigm, the contrast of diachronic, synchronic and interactive perspectives, and the emphases on society and on culture.

Chapter 2: Precursors of the Anthropological Tradition

Modern anthropology began in the late nineteenth century, but its origins reach back further. The chapter looks at seventeenth-century figures such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke and Hobbes, at debates over what counted as fully human, and at Montesquieu, Rousseau and others, as well as the ideas of polygenesis and monogenesis.

Chapters 3–4: Changing Perspectives on Evolution; Diffusionist and Culture-Area Theories

Chapter 3 traces how nineteenth-century evolutionism changed, from the Great Chain of Being to unilinear, universal and multilinear evolutionism and then to recent neo-Darwinism. Chapter 4 covers antecedents in the German philological tradition, Ratzel and others, British diffusionists such as Elliot Smith and Perry, the culture-area theorists including Wissler and the "Dutch structuralism" regional approaches. It ends with three types of comparison: illustrative, global-sample and controlled.

Chapters 5–7: Functionalism and Structural-Functionalism; Action and Process; Marxist Perspectives

Chapter 5 presents the functionalism of Malinowski and the structural-functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown, which dominated early twentieth-century British anthropology, with their roots in Durkheimian sociology. Chapter 6 turns to the dynamic approaches of the 1950s onward, the transactionalists such as Fredrik Barth and the Manchester School, and discusses three ethnographic debates (Friedman and Leach, Wilmsen and Lee, Obeyesekere and Sahlins). Chapter 7 treats the Marxist interest of the 1970s and after, in particular Godelier's structural Marxism and Meillassoux's "land and labour" Marxism.

Chapter 8: From Relativism to Cognitive Science

The chapter centres on relativism, which was central to Boas's vision and was taken up by Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, and sets against it Lévy-Bruhl's view that some cultures are superior to others. It also covers Whorf's linguistic relativism and the implications of different kinship categorisations for ways of thinking. The title indicates a move on to cognitive science.

Chapters 9–10: Structuralism, from Linguistics to Anthropology; Poststructuralists and Feminists

Chapter 9 explains structuralism as an emphasis on pattern and on meaning arising from relations, beginning with Saussure in linguistics and continuing with Lévi-Strauss on kinship and myth, with later developments in Britain, Brazil and the Netherlands. Chapter 10 takes up poststructuralism and feminism together, as both involve an understanding of power relations, discussing Derrida, Foucault and Bourdieu and the study of gender.

Chapters 11–12: Mavericks; Interpretive Approaches

Chapter 11 is a short chapter on two figures, Gregory Bateson (national character) and Mary Douglas ("grid and group"). Chapter 12 deals with the rejection of structure by Evans-Pritchard, who saw anthropology as akin to history or translation, and by Geertz, who favoured "thick description".

Chapters 13–14: Postmodernism and Its Aftermath; Conclusions

Chapter 13 covers postmodernism and the role of globalization, indigeneity and renewed interest in nationalism. Chapter 14 reviews major themes in the history of anthropology from the early eighteenth century to the Covid-19 pandemic, with reflections on the history of anthropology and native affairs, national traditions and contemporary issues including Black Lives Matter.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4

• Four fields: the biological, archaeological, linguistic and cultural components of anthropology, of which the book treats cultural anthropology.
• Paradigm: an overarching framework in the discipline's development.
• Unilinear, universal and multilinear evolutionism: the successive forms of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought.
• Diffusionism and culture areas: explanations of cultural similarity through spread and regional grouping.

Chapters 5–8

• Organic analogy and functionalism: society as an organism, Malinowski's fieldwork-based functionalism and Radcliffe-Brown's natural-science model.
• Transactionalism and the Manchester School: dynamic approaches focused on action and process.
• Relativism: Boas's view that no culture is superior to another, and linguistic relativism.

Chapters 9–14

• Structuralism: meaning as relations between things, in the line from Saussure to Lévi-Strauss.
• Poststructuralism and feminism: approaches centred on power relations.
• Thick description: Geertz's approach, set against structure by the interpretive chapter.
• Indigeneity and globalization: topics of the postmodernism chapter.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Wide, comparative coverage. The publisher describes coverage from the beginnings of the subject, evolutionism, functionalism, structuralism and Marxism through to globalization, post-colonialism and notions of "race" and being "indigenous".
• Beyond Europe and North America. The blurb says this edition makes plain the contributions of trendsetters in the rest of the world, and the final chapter discusses national traditions.
• Compact chapters and reference apparatus. Most chapters are short and self-contained, and the book has dates of birth and death, an extensive glossary and "award-winning diagrams", according to the publisher.
• Debates as well as schools. Chapter 6 uses specific ethnographic debates to show that anthropology is not free of dispute over interpretation.

Limitations

• Brief treatment of some schools. With a main text of about 200 pages and chapters as short as eight pages (Mavericks, Interpretive Approaches), some schools are discussed briefly, and the reader will need primary texts to follow any of them in depth.
• Centred on cultural anthropology. The first chapter states that the book is basically about cultural anthropology, so the other three fields appear only as context.
• Survey, not critique. The publisher presents the book as a clear, comprehensive account of concepts. A reader wanting a sustained critical reading of the discipline's politics would need to add another source.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the introductory cultural anthropology course, Barnard's book is the one to read for theory. Guest's Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age and Eriksen's Small Places, Large Issues are introductory textbooks that cover concepts and ethnographic topics, and Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa is a classic single-community ethnography by one of the Boasian students named in Barnard's chapter on relativism. Wolf's Europe and the People Without History is a different kind of book, a sustained historical argument that applies political economy on a global scale.

The sensible order is to take one of the introductory textbooks first, then Barnard when you want to place the concepts met there in their intellectual context, and then Wolf or a primary ethnography to see a theoretical perspective applied.

How to Use This Book

The book is for second- and third-year undergraduates and for postgraduates needing an overview, and it assumes an introductory course in cultural or social anthropology. Read Chapter 1 first for the book's framing, then read the chapters in order, since later schools are defined in reaction to earlier ones. Because the chapters are short, they can be assigned alongside a classic reading for each school: for example Chapter 5 with Malinowski, Chapter 9 with Lévi-Strauss, and Chapter 12 with Geertz.

Keep a table comparing each school's key figures, central question and main critique, and use the glossary and the appendix of dates of birth and death for revision. The Conclusions chapter is useful for revision and for framing an essay or dissertation, as it draws together the major themes of the book.