peter m. worsley: the end of anthropology?

8/10/2019 Peter M. Worsley: The end of anthropology?

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TR NS CTIONS O THE SIXTH

WORLD CONGRESS O SOCIOLOGY

CTES DU SIXI M

CONGRES MONDI L DE SOCIOLOGIE

VOLUME III


2/15

TRANSACTIONS OF THE SIXTH

WORLD CONGRESS OF

SOCIOLOGY

ACTES DU

SIXIEME

CONGRES MONDIAL

E

SOCIOLOGIE

Evian

4 11

September

1966

VOLUME III

WORKING

GROUPS AND

ROUND

TABLES PAPERS

COMMUNICATIONS

DES GROUPES DE TRAVAIL

ET DES TABLES RONDES

INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGICAL

ASSOCIATION

ASSOCIATION

INTERNATIONALE DE SOCIOLOGIE

1970


3/15

International Sociological Association 197

7 via Daverio Milan and printed in Belgium

by

Imprimerie Nauwelaerts Louvain

iv


4/15

Contents

Table des Matieres

-_- nr

AND DIVERSITY

IN

SOCIOLOGY

: .Tri

ET

DIVERSITE

EN

SOCIOLOGIE

E.Shils

The Trend of Sociological Research

= :O:OLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

=i oLOGIE

ET SOCIOLOGIE

I L

Horowitz

M. Kalab and

Z.

Strmiska

Social Science and

Public Policy

A

propos

de quelques questions sur la

conception marxiste de la theorie socio-

loqique

0. Uribe-Villegas Ideologie et sociologie

":::IOLOGY

AND SOCIAL ANTRHOPOLOGY

"X OLOGIE ET ETHNOLOGIE

C

Nakane

A. Lopasic

Sociology and Social Anthropology

in

a Complex Society

Confraternities

in

rural

Europe:

some

3

37

69

93

99

sociological

Considerations 111

P. Worsley The End of Anthropology . 121

::\ ERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHES

AND COMMON MECHANISMS

?.t:CHERCHES INTER-DISCIPLINAIRES ET MECANISMES COMMUNS

L

E. Khoruts

Cognitive

Structure and Cognitive Si-

tuation 133

Ch. Perelman

Recherches interdisciplinaires sur

I

ar

gumentation

143

L Solari Sur

le

contenu

et

la

portee de J appro-

che econometrique 153

v


5/15

ECONOMY AND SOCIOLOGY

ECONOMIE

ET

SOCIOLOGIE

K Odaka Work and Leisure: the Case of apa-

nese Industrial Workers

169

NATIONAL SCHOOLS AND COMMON OBJECTIVES

ECOLES NATIONALES

ET

OBJECTIFS COMMUNS

J.Szczepanski

Common Objectives of

Sociology

and

Polish

National

School 191

CONFLICT RESEARCH AND RESEARCH IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION

RECHERCHES

SUR LES

CONFLITS

ET

SUR

LEUR

RESOLUTION

A Akiwowo

L Kuper

NEW NATIONS

NATIONS

NOUVELLES

F. N Sougan

Agblemagnon

E Modrjinska a.

S K Nandy

Traditional Principle of Social Grouping

and Problems of Party Formation and

Mobilization in Nigeria 209

Conflict

and the Plural Society: Ideo-

logies

of Violence among

Subordinate

Groups 225

Interpretation sociologique de

la

de-

colonisation:

le

cas de J Afrique Noire

Aspects sociologiques de

la souverai

nete

nationale

ls Modernization Westernization? What

about Easternization and Traditionaliza

t ion?

243

255

267

CULTURAL OR RACIAL TENSIONS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

TENSIONS

CULTURELLES

OU

RACIALES

ET

RELATIONS

INTERNATIONALES

J.

A Fishman

G. Goriely

Sociolinguistic Perspective

on Internal

Linguistic Tensions and their

Impact

on

External

Relations 281

Conflits nationaux et conflits sociaux

291

vi


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7/15

THE END

OF

ANTHROPOLOGY?

PETER WORSLEY

University of Manchester

Ethnology is in the sady ludicrous not

to

say

tragic position

that

at the

very

moment when it

begins

...

to

start ready for work on its appointed

task

the

material

of

its

study melts

away

with

hopeless rapidity.

B. MALINOWSKI Argonauts of

the

Western

Pacific 1922,

p

xv .

This opening sentence of the first great

classic

of modern

social

anthropology indeed strikes

a tragic note:

the spectre

of death

at the

moment

of birth. And t is,

lamentably

and prophetically true if,

that is, we accept as Malinowski clearly does) the assumption that

anthropology is

distinguished

from

other social sciences

in

that

i t

deals

with a

particular

subst ntive

portion

of

reality

- primitive

society. This

view

is still widely held.

1

Empirically primitive society is,

in

fact, the

area

which anthro

pologists

have

primarily

studied.

They

have struggled with might

and main

to

eschew

what

they

see as value-judgments

-

and the

problems of typological

classification and of

the general

concept

ualization of development - only

at

the price

of

producing a relat

ivistic and

often

largely

descriptive corpus

of studies.

Furthermore

this

concentration

on the primitive implies, in effect, the renuncia

tion

of

panoptic

claims

to be The Science

of

Man, a claim more

common

in

the

past

though

still

by

no means unheard of

today

especially

in

the

U.S.A.,

where

it

is

institutionalized

in

academic

curricula which

embrace under Anthropology not

only

Social

Man

but even

Bio-social

Man. But in

Britain, t is

usually

only

rit

ually

and

half-heartedly invoked today. Thus

Evans-Pritchard

for

example

makes the conventional claim:

theoretically at

ny

rate

social anthropology is the study

of all human

societies and not

1

E.g.

by EVANS-PRITCHARD, in

his

Social

Anthropology

1951, pp 10-11.


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122 ACTES DU

SIXIEME

CONGRES

MONDIAL

DE

SOCIOLOGIE

merely of primitive

societies,

even

i in

practice

and for convenience,

at

the

present time its attention is

mostly given

to

the

institutions

of

the

simpler

peoples

p. 10, my italics.).

t is not only that anthropologists

have

mainly concentrated on

tribal

societies,

and

rarely

turned their attention

to

advanced

industrial

societies;

even more, they commonly exhibit disinterest

in

the

modern sectors

of

underdeveloped societies - or, more

precisely for

the

concept of sectors smacks of compartments),

what is

analytical

better conceived

of

as a field

of

emergent social

relationships, itself part

of

ever-wider fields, world-society being

the

only meaningful

total system

today.

2

The

implication of this al

ternative

conceptualization

is

that

increasingly there are

not

two

separate spheres

or

sectors in post-colonial societies -

the

primitive and

the

modern - but a single social field. Not all

anthrnpologists, by any means, have thought schematically,

in

terms

of

two discrete

sectors,

however.

The

classic

debate was begun

on this qi;.estion in

the

1930s, as far as

British

social anthropology

is concerned, in

the

symposium,

Methods

of

Study

of

Culture

Contact

in

Africa

and the view

I have suggested as

the more

analytically

profitable

one

has been

operationalized

in a number

of

outstanding

studies

since that time, notably in

the

work

of

the

Wilsons, Epstein,

Mayer,

Banton, Mitchell, to name no others.

But

the

tendency is

for

these researchers

to

re-define

themselves as sociologists,

or

to define away

the

primitive/advanced distinction itself. In

the

process, anthropology as a science

with

a

distinct

substantive

subject-matter, disappears. The actual

term

sociology is

frequently

used

by

such

writers

to describe

their

own and

their

colleagues

work, e.g.

Gluckman s critique

of

Malinowski s

sociological

theor

ies 1947), his

description

of Fortes work as An

Advance in

African

Sociology etc.

A large number

of

anthropologists,

nevertheless,

remain obdur

ately -

and often

valuably - wedded to

the

study

of what

are

sometimes

conceived

of, to

one

degree

or

another (and what some

times are quite

misconceived

of as isolated pre-industrial tribal

societies with all the

recognised ambiguity

of

the

epithet tribal)

and

of particular forms of social

organisation

eminently well-devel

oped in,

or

even

quite

peculiar to, such societies:

age-set

organiza

tion, ancestor-cults, lineage-systems, witchcraft, etc., etc.

The rationale of

the

study of

the

primitive>> normally advanced

2

See my

Third

World 1964, pp. 1-20, 50-51.


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THE

END OF

ANTHROPOLOGY ?

123

is a justification not so

much in

terms of intrinsic interest

(even

less,

of

applied utility), but

in

terms of a justification of anthrop

ology

as

the comparative dimension

of

the social

sciences, True,

there

are major

ambivalences

here, one

school emphasising the

universals

underlying the

variety

of

socio-cultural

forms:

that

the

exotic is merely one way of

handling

problems which men face

n

all

ages

and places;

the other - essentially pluralistic - em

phasising often holistically) the uniqueness of any

particular

socio

cultural arrangement. Common to both

of

these

apparently

quite

opposed orientations is a

more fundamental

shared orientation: a

relativising perspective which is both cognitive and

ethical,

since

the

first

orientation emphasises

that

seemingly exotic customs

are,

in fact, attempts

to deal

with

similar

problems

that

we handle n

different ways.

The

second orientation

suggests

that our

folkways

and preoccupations are time- and

culture-bound,

and

that our

part

icular

cultural heritage, being unique, is both transitory and

by no

means

superior. There

are, it is held,

an

incredible number

of

possible leads

all of

which... may serve a society to live by.

3

They are

human beings,

as are we; we,

therefore,

are

not

superior,

only

different.

All

societies are unique, and

of

equal

atomic weight

for

the

purposes of comparative

sociology.

The obscure Australian

tribe, is, for these scientific purposes, as important an object of

study

as is the U.S.S.R. In this perspective, no society is exotic;

no society pathological, in Durkheim s sense: all are normal

variations on common

human

social

themes.

These emphatic kinds

of

relativism were evoked,

historically, by

half

a

century

and

more

of

reaction to absolute claims to

superiority

by racist and imperialist

apologists

for various cultures,

societies,

and

races.

In the event, however,

we

have eliminated value-judg

ments about inferiority or superiority, have undermined assump

tion about

the

rightness, efficiency or

the

historical/evolutionary

inevitability of

the

advanced

industrial

soceties,

and have demol

ished nineteenth-century theories of social

evolution,

only at the

expense

of

avoding problems of typological

classification

of the var

iety

of

human

societies,

and in particular problems

of

development,

directionality and change. Relativism of these kinds can handle

certain kinds of process - homoeostatic or feedback processes,

notably

replacement

change, or the way

in

which conflict

is

re

solved within,

or even so

as to

strengthen, ongoing wider structures.

3

Ruth

BENEDICT,

Patterns of

Culture

Pelican,

N.Y., 1946, p.

20


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124 TRANSACTIONS OF THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY

But such orientations are

incapable

of

handling

directional process,

emergence,

and radical

social change. Anthropologists who wished

to avoid being impaled

on the

dilemma-horns of

unique

description,

on the one

hand, and to eschew

the

older

evolutionist

options

on

the other,

tended to

fall

back

on propositions about

universal

trans

cultural

mechanisms, e.g.

statements about the

social

functions of

conflict. Naturally,

they

were

attracted

to

the

most cognate kind

of

sociological

theory

- formalism, particularly that

of

Simmel

4

;

earlier, some had explored

cultural

typologies - usually non-devel

opmental,

and sometimes of a global, psychological kind e.g. Ruth

Benedict) -

which

transcended cultural relationships shaped by

history

or

geography.

Others were based on culture-area

assump

tions, from early American

cultural

anthropology, e.g. Herskovits

East

African Cattle

Complex of 1926, to

the assumption

of a

Mediterranean

Culture more recently. l l these

styles of

approach

flinched back from any attempt to construct

categories which

in

corporate

directional

process. The patent evidence of emergence,

of

disappearance, and

of displacement,

which the

genesis of

the

new states has forced

on our

attention

in

a now unavoidable way,

was

blandly

not discussed.

Little wonder, then, that

the

central

process

of

our

time,

perhaps,

in retrospect,

one

of

the crucial thresholds

in

the

evolution

of

human society:

the

crossing of

the development-barrier:

has not

been, and

could

not be,

meaningfully

handled within such frame

works;

nor

that

so many anthropologists, working as they do

in

societies where Development

Plans, political

parties,

trade unions,

cooperatives, cold

and

hot

war, State

intervention

in peasant

agri

culture,

massive

labour migration, urban explosion, are

part

of

the

everyday experience of members of

the

very societies they are

studying, nevertheless appear to

be dealing

with Platonic insulated

micro-worlds

where such things, apparently, never intrude.

The paucity,

and relative

poverty,

of comparative

studies

which

even touch upon problems of change from

one type

of society to

another, is equally built-in, since, for formalist universalism, all

societies

are temporally

equal

the ethnographic present),

and

are

never located in

any developmental process or

classified as

cases

of

particular developmental types;

and for holistic pluralism, even

in its more sophisticated varieties, categories such

as

state or

4

See my

Bureaucracy

and Decolonization: Democracy From the Top,

in

The

New

Sociology

ed.

I L

HOROWITZ,

1965,

pp.

370-390.


11/15

THE END OF ANTHROPOLOGY ?

125

stateless are established,

with

little

or

no

consideration

given to

defining

the

conditions for their emergence, persistence,

or

dis

placement. In

other

words,

the

typologies in what few comparative

studies

we possess are static and/or formal, rather

than dynamic

and processual.

This development

of

comparative

studies

explains its

converse:

the

multiplication of

monographs

that

do

not cumulatively lead to

the refinement

and development

of

a

gener l

body of theory as

part of a collective on-going debate within a

community

of

scholars,

but

merely

co-exist as encapsulated entities that only make

the

most perfunctory of gestures, in

the

last few pages,

in the direction

of

current

theoretical and

methodological debate.

In

fact,

there

is

no debate.

The

only relationship

established

between such works

is a physical

one

of

contiguous location

in

space on

library shelves.

Comparative

discussion largely consists of each owner of a

tribe

considering

how

his society differs from

the

specific society under

discussion. For

him, all

too

often,

the central-reference-points

are

the

two societies rather than general

theoretical

issues.

t

is not

merely

frivolous to observe that

the conventional opening gambit

in

verbal discussion But in

my tribe

... reflects seriously

the

level

of generalisation and comparison.

t

is

commonly accompanied by

a self-conscious, deprecatory laugh, which communicates

an

aware

ness

of

precisely these shortcomings. But from

the point

of

view

of

science, this is no joke. The

inevitable result

is

the accumulation

of monographs, however

sophisticated in technique

and

presenta

tion,

which

are utimately idiographic rather than nomothetic.

The

real object ought

to

be

to abolish the idiographic/nomothetic

dis

tinction

altogether.

Because of

the absence

of

any

general typology of societies and

theory

of

development,

the contribution which

anthropology has

made

to

comparative studies

has been strangely skewed, not to

say

arbitrary.

f

the

interest is

said

to lie specifically

in the

prim

itive, then

the number

of adequate

modern

studies of hunting-and

collecting societies,

for

example,

is

striking.

f

the

value

of an

thropology

lies

in

its

capacity

to

contribute

to

our knowledge

of

the

v rieties

of socio-cultural systems,

the absence

of study of

the

hydraulic society

which could

well

be claimed, quantitatively,

to

be the dominant

form of social

organisation before

modern in

dustrialism,

both in terms

of

the

proportion

of

human

beings

who

have

lived

in

such

societies, and

in

terms of

the

persistence of

these

large-scale societies over millennia is an equally surprising defici-


12/15

126 ACTES DU SIXIEME CONGRES MONDIAL DE SOCIOLOGIE

ency particularly since the contrast between this form of society

and

West

European feudalism)) has been a

key

theoretical theme

in the literature, both because of

its implications

for typology and

for development theory, and not least because of

its

considerable

implications

for

contemporary political and social developments in

Asia.

5

Again,

though

we have a number of important particular studies

of pa.storal societies by anthropologists,

6

we

have had little gener

alization

about pastoralism as a

social

form (and about the

rela

tionship between pastoralists and sedentary peoples)

since

Ibn Khal

dun. That

pastoral

societies do have common, transcultural

char

acteristics, and,

as importantly,

are seen

to

have

by

non-pastoralists

as well as by themselves, is evident as a

contemporary

social issue

of

no

mean importance in

the

nigh-universal

disregard with which

pastoralists are treated

in

developing))

areas,

a disregard which

ranges

from

violent forms

Tibet, Kurdistan, or Kazakhstan), to less

violent forms

in

the

Sudan

or East

Africa.

7

Even

if we take

tradi

tional anthropological self-definitions of the discipline s scientific

role as

the comparative

(pre-industrial) dimension of the social

sciences,

they can

only

be

said

to have done this

particular

job

very patchily,

for the study

of

the diversity

of human

cultures

can

scarcely be

said to

have

been carried out

very systematically, or

taken very far

where

it

has been touched

upon, when

such

major

types

of socio-cultural organization as

hunting-and

collecting, pas

toralism,

or

hydraulic society have

been,

to one degree or

another,

severely

neglected. The

reason for

this

basically derives from the

theoretical assumption

that

societies))

are

atomic

entities

of

equal

comparative

weight. They

are

rarely

handled within the framework

of c:ny

typology

of societies, least of all within typologies of a

s Edmund

LEACH,

in his Hydraulic

Society

in Ceylon,

Past

and

Present

15,

pp. 2-26,

make

an

exceptional,

and very

valuable,

contribution, as

an

anthropologist, to this

discussion.

6

E.g.

EvANS-PRITCHARD s

The

Nuer

1949,

and

The

Sanusi

of

Cyrenaica

1949, Fredrik BARTH S Political leadership among

the

Swat

Pathans

1959, and

Nomads of South Persia 1961, D.

J.

STENNING, Savannah Nomads 1959,

and I M. LEWIS

A

Pastoral Democracy, 1961.

7

See, e.g. Settlement of Nomads in the Sudan: a Critique of Present

Plans, T. AsAD, I CuNNISON, and L G. HILL, unpublished paper, Department

of Social

Anthropology,

University of Khartoum, 1965; T. ASAD, The

seasonal movements of the

Kababish

of Northern Kordofan,

Sudan

Notes

and

Records

Vol. 46, 1965.


13/15

THE END OF ANTHROPOLOGY ?

27

developmental nature,

(except

at the level

of discussion of

environ

mental/technological

constraints).

8

Comparative

work, even at

the level

of

regional

studies, has also

been very

limited, with works like Schapera's overnment and ol-

itics

in

Tribal Societies

1950)

or Mair's

rimitive

overnment

1962)

as

notable

exceptions.

t

is worth

noting

that,

despite

their titles,

these are not about tribal

or

primitive politics, but are regional-

comparative studies of

Southern

Africa and East Africa respectively.

What

usually passes for comparative

works,

is,

at

its

lowest level,

casual

analogy

from

similar

societies; at best, the

delineation

of

parallel mechanisms in

otherwise

quite

differing societies and

social

situations. These

procedures are

justified as something called

in-

sights, sc. lack of

theoretical system and

rigour

or isolated aperr;:us

At

the

very best, they are extremely valuable demonstrations, within

a

formalist framework,

of

universal mechanisms,

e.g. the postulated

segregation of affectual

and authority

relationships

(Homans

and

Schneider),

the resolution

of conflict Gluckman, Coser),

the

social

handling

of

the

biological phenomena of

adolescence

Eisenstadt),

etc., etc.

A few

anthropologists

have taken

the major alternative

open to

those who

seek

to assert

the distinctiveness

of their

discipline:

they

define

it in

terms of its

techniques and

methods, rather than

in

terms

of substantive

subject-matter.

Firth,

notably,

has increasingly

come to lay

the

stress,

over the years, on

anthropology as micro-

sociology, rather

than

the science of primitive society.

9

The relevant techniques and methods

are, of course, first-hand

participant

observation, intensive

study

in

depth and with

restric

ion

of range both

in

time and place), and

the

case-study or

the

situational analysis, rather than

extensive

study,

reliance on survey

material, and

upon secondary

data.

Such techniques

and methods,

though primarily,

and fruitfully,

developed by anthropologists, have

now

for

so

long

been incorporated

into the normal

battery

of invest

igatory and analytical

procedures of sociologists

that

they no

longer sharply

define

off

the

spheres of influence of two distinct

disciplines. This

crossing

of

the

border-lines is, for

the United

States,

8

E.g. Daryl

FoRDE s

Habitat

Economy and

Society 1934,

and

later works

by

this author;

or, at a somewhat

more sophisticated comparative

level,

Julian STEWARn s multilineal evolutionism The Theory of Culture Change,

1955).

9

E.g.

The Future of Social Anthropology, Man

1944:8;

The

Elements

of Social Organisation

1951,

pp.

17

ff.


14/15

128 TRANSACTIONS OF THE SIXTH WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY

at least as old as

the

Chicago school of the 1920s, Middletown

Hawthorne, and Street Corner Society. A

parallel

convergence was

delayed in

Great Britain until after World War II.

Since

then,

it

has

become on

increasingly

arbitrary

operation to attempt to

label

speci

fic

social

researchers

as

either

anthropologists

or

Sociologists.

These labels are more like ideal-typological poles at either end

of

a

continuum

- but the

great

majority of researchers fall increasingly

in the

grey area

between.

The poles, however,

remain.

f social anthropology continues

to uphold

its

traditional concern with the

primitive,

it

must,

inex

orably,

die

out with its subject-matter, though this

may take

a long

time

still. t

will become

increasingly dependent

on records of

now-extinct

societies,

and

therefore

a branch of history. This does

not take

it

out

of

the realm

of the social

sciences.

As

Evans-Prit

chard has correctly emphasized, historiography must become

more

sociological:

history is not a domain

of

its own but a part

of

the

social sciences.) But

it

will mean

the

progressive

renunciation

of

concern

with contemporary societies as

these

societies cease to

exist.

Truly,

Maitland s

apothegm that anthropology must choose

between being history and being nothing

will

have proved pro

phetically

accurate. t

is noteworthy that

the

1966 Conference

of

the

British

Association

of Social

Anthropologists was

on the theme

Anthropological Studies of

the

Past. f this option is taken,

the

entire realm

of

contemporary societies will

become the province

of sociology, as primitive societies become incorporated into

developing

nation-states

and

aggregations

of nation-states, and of

ideological, economic, political,

etc.

entities often cutting across

nation-states,

or subsuming them within

blocs and groupings.

I would not wish for one

moment

to denigrate the value, for the

social sciences as comparative disciplines,

of

the

rescue opera

tion

of

studying primitive societes before they

do

disappear.

The

writer himself has studied an Australian aboriginal community of

only some 450 souls. Like most such communities today, however,

they

were

very

far

from

their

pre-European

condition.

Yet

there

is something incongruous, not to say irresponsible, in

the

situation

I found myself in recently,

of

discussing with an anthropologst his

work on a tiny hunting-and-collecting band at

the

very foot

of

a

huge mountain-area where half a

million

people produce a cash-crop

which

brought

in

for that country a not inconsiderable proportion

of its foreign earnings, but

whose

land-tenure and

land-usage

sys

tem has

never

been properly

studied,

let alone

their

general culture


15/15

THE END OF ANTHROPOLOGY

?

129

and

social organisation. To take

another

striking example,

no

thorough

study has yet been carried

out

by a sociologist/anthro

pologist of

the

enormous Gezira cotton-growing scheme in tne

Sudan Republic, which

brings in some half of the Sudan s foreign

earnings and which has

been

in existence since

1925

despite

cont

inuous anthropological

research

in

that

country by modern social

anthropologists

over several

decades.

The choice for

anthropology

is plain. f its practitioners do

opt

to become the comparative wing of

general

sociology, they will

have to

face central

problems of

theoretical

re-orientation. Specific

ally they will have to come to terms

with the

problem of devel

oping

a

subsitute

for

the structural

functionalism which

they have

been

criticising for

twenty

years, but

for which

no

more

powerful

alternative has been

generated

within anthropology

itself. In the

light

of what we know of

the sociology of knowledge, and in the

light of

the traditional

conceptions of

the

proper domain of

the

di

scipline, such theoretical innovations are unlikely

to develop

from

within

the

closed

world

of anthropological theory.

Hence,

fruitful

new

lines of

inquiry

have notably borrowed theoretical guide-lines

from

other cognate

disciplines: Levi-Strauss

and

Leach from lin

guistics; Fallers, Geertz

and others from Weber;

Gluckman

from

Simmel.

The

work of Sahlins, Wolf

and colleagues

represents a

some

what

different

attempt to

reintroduce problems of

emergence and

process,

of typology and of

development, in

a

word,

of

evolution.

Unless

anthropology

grapples

with

development/evolution, it faces

the fate of those

animal species

that became over-adapted to

spe

cialized environments.

A final note. Many of the strictures

developed

here -

and

others - could

equally

well be applied to past

and

current socio

logical

studies. But that

would

be a separate task: I have, therefore,

deliberately

focussed

on

anthropology

in this paper, not to single

this discipline

out

for a critique equally

relevant

to

other

social

sciences, but because the crisis

has

reached an

advanced

point in

that

particular

discipline.

peter m. worsley: the end of anthropology?

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