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Anthropology among the powers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 1999

ERIC R. WOLF
ERIC R. WOLF
Affiliation:
4 Blueberry Hill Road, Irvington, New York 10533–1402, USA
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Abstract

Assessing anthropology's relation to the powers external to it requires not merely a history of anthropological ideas, but also an appraisal of the changing political economic arenas within which the discipline developed. That field was structured by capitalist development and the formation of nation-states and their rivalries in imperialism and colonialism, as well as by the rise of new educational regimes, institutions and disciplines. Anthropology was shaped not only by the growth of professional clusters within it, but also by the often contradictory demands generated by the interplay of elements in the field of forces that surrounded it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Anthropology , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1999 , pp. 121 - 134
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I want to thank Professor Marilyn Strathern for inviting me, on behalf of EASA, to deliver this paper as the key address at the Fifth Biennial EASA Conference in Frankfurt, 4 September 1998. I acknowledge with thanks the discussions on the development of Soviet anthropology sustained during its preparation with Igor I. Krupnik, Anatoly M. Khazanov, and Peter Schweitzer. I owe a special gratitude to Sydel Silverman for help in focusing my ideas and organising their presentation. John Rashford and Jane Schneider improved the outcome with their editorial suggestions. Any omissions and commissions are of course mine.