The Politics of Anthropology

In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 23, Heft 3, S. 290-303

Abstract

The broader intellectual & political contexts of anthropology are traced from its early strong relation to biological evolutionism to the functionalist paradigm promulgated by Bronislaw Malinowski. It is argued that the latter is a product of the division between bourgeois cosmopolitan liberalism & nationalism of ethnic groups, two currents in the Hapsburg Empire, that also shaped the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein & Karl Popper. Definitive "centers of gravity" for anthropology have shifted from primitive cultures, to field methods, to the current notions of culture & meaning. Hermeneutics in the US is likened to an epidemic of intoxication; formation of a Hermeneutics Anonymous is endorsed to control its use. Clifford Geertz's critique of Edward Evans-Pritchard as a conceptual imperialist is cited as a example of this style of hermeneutics. A. Waters