Colonialism,Capital, and the Rise of the Structural-Functionalist School of British Anthropology

It is by now a truism that anthropology, especially British social anthropology, emerged under the regime of colonialism, and thus, to some extent, bears the imprint of and some responsibility for that oppressive institution. The reality is much more interesting. This paper, by focusing on the role of funding in the success of many intellectual paradigms, traces the source of the pre-eminence of British structural-functionalism not to the colonial system, but rather to an American intellectual tradition that was progressive, reform-minded, and devoted to benefiting oppressed peoples, especially African-Americans and latterly Africans.     

Anthropologist and “Native” in Early Twentieth Century New Guinea: Malinowski and Thurnwald

Malinowski, an anglicized Pole and Thurnwald, a German, were in their different ways pioneers of anthropological fieldwork. Both men kept diaries in which they candidly recorded their experiences, Thurnwald’s remaining unpublished. These diaries, unlike retrospective and sanitized accounts, reveal their attitudes and behaviours towards two main categories of “natives”: the “boys” they employed, and the “savages” who were the object of their research. Comparison of the diary contents show some striking contrasts, attributable to differences in their field situations and also their personality characteristics. In particular, Thurnwald maintained a far greater social distance than Malinowski. Yet both men displayed the then taken‐for‐granted sense of unquestioned European superiority, and retained elements of that stance to the end of their careers.