Henrika Kuklick

The savage within : the social history of British anthropology, 1885-1945

1. Through the looking glass 2. Scholars and practical men 3. Civilization and its satisfactions 4. The savage within 5. The colonial exchange 6. Of councillors and kings 7. The politics of perception Appendices.

Boundary maintenance in American sociology: Limitations to academic “professionalization”

The institutionalization of social scientific disciplines at the turn of the century did not, in fact, result in academic behavior consistent with the “professionalization” models now in vogue among students of this period. Formal attributes of “professional” status have not proven reliable indices to the degree of consensus predicted for a “mature” discipline, as is evident from the history of a single field, American sociology—ironically the source of many “professionalization” schemes. Such schemes may appeal to historians because they paradoxically reinforce academic ideology; they represent a new variant of “whiggish” internalism, disguised as externalist cynicism. If we are to write accurate historical accounts, we must recognize that the self-consciously “professional” social scientists of the turn of the century sought ends rather different from those imputed to them by “presentist” analysts. Notions of the socially integrative functions of work were widespread during this period and not restricted to those occupational groups we now recognize as “professional”.

The Theory of Evolution and Cultural Anthropology

The relationship between cultural anthropology and Darwinism is complex. Contrary to what was once received wisdom, cultural anthropology was not inspired by Darwin’s ideas. Many nineteenth-century anthropological arguments predated Darwinism by a century or more. Yet, Darwinians figured prominently in organized anthropology in late-nineteenth century Britain, and when Darwin wrote The Descent of Man he drew upon the writings of an international population of anthropologists – although his most important sources were British. But cultural anthropology changed dramatically at the end of the nineteenth century, when its practitioners left their armchairs and took to the field – and conceptualized cultural variation in terms of Darwinian biogeography. Arguably, these practitioners, such as Baldwin Spencer, were influenced by the Darwin who wrote On the Origin of Species, not the Darwin who wrote The Descent of Man. And the disciplinary result of their labors was paradoxical: cultural anthropology informed by notions derived from Darwinian biology factored biological elements out of explanations of cultural variation.

Ethnography and the Historical Imagination.

The traditional shore whaling or “whale fishing” began in the area of Talcahuano in the first half of the nineteenth century and then spread to the south of Chile, to Chiloe Island. In this paper we develop a historical ethnography of shore whaling in Tumbes and Santa María Island, named in the literature of the time as “whale fishing”. Data on these operations are coming from a series of reports written in the early twentieth century, supplemented with information from interviews with people who knew firsthand the world of whalers. The integration of these data will allow us to write a narrative of whaling in south central Chile in the nineteenth century.

SHULAMIT REINHARZ. On Becoming a Social Scientist. Pp. xviii, 422. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979.

time reshaping some of its key concepts in order to make them amenable to the needs of the analytical language. On the other hand, Israel restructures the meanings of many of analytic language’s concepts in order to demonstrate their latent dialectical structure. Key to both efforts and bridging them is Israel’s reliance on an integrating conception of language and its function in human praxis. How successful is Professor Israel’s theoretical synthesis? It is difficult to say. Some readers will be uneasy with his rejection of empirical experience as