‘Development of Social Thought’

Critical overview (up to 2000 words) of a theorist or school of theory in the history of social thought up to the 1970s that is not covered in the lectures and /or tutorials. A sample of options will be posted later on LMS.

Main topic choice:

Choose as one option a figure (or enduring partnership, e.g. Beatrice Whiting and John Whiting) we do not treat in depth in the unit (i.e. NOTAnne Robert Jacques Turgot, Lewis Henry Morgan, Henry Maine, Jacob Bachofen, Franz Boas, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Bronislaw Malinowski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Robert Redfield, Eric Wolf, Karl Marx,Friederich Engels, William Roseberry, Clifford Geertz, etc.) from one of the schools or perspectives of particular interest to you in the development of social thought. Evaluate that figure’s position in relation to the trajectory of the development of social thought, including a critical analysis of original contributions of that thinker and situating that thinker’s contributions with regard to other schools and perspectives treated in the unit.That is, you should provide a critique of this figure’s contributions seen from the perspective of at least one other perspective we treat in the unit. You will certainly not be expected to read everything that figure has written, but some sample of the figure’s theoretical papers and, where relevant, including an ethnographic text (e.g. a monograph) written by that person.

Alternatively, you need not pick an individual but some cluster of individuals that constitute a school or distinct perspective in social thought that we have not treated in lectures, tutorials and/or films. Examples would be ‘Diffusionism’, ‘National Character, ‘Cultural Ecology’, etc. That is, you would read a sampling of various theorists writing in the framework of that perspective and then situate the perspective as a whole with regard to some other school(s) or perspective(s) we do discuss in the unit.

Some examples of figures and the schools with which some phases of their work are associated are given below. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. You can find dozens (actually, probably hundreds!) of other figures discussed in the Recommended and Additional Readings provided on pages 6-7 of the unit outline. Voget (1975) is particularly comprehensive for anthropological theories and Aron (1965) provides good coverage for sociological theorists.

As I have noted before, this unit is only intended to cover the development of social thought up to about the end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s. Social theorists whose major impact was exercised after this era are treated in the complementary unit ANTH3402 ‘Advanced Social Theory’. If you are not sure whether the theorist you wish to treat falls within the purview of this unit, or whether there are sufficient sources to write a 2000-word essay on a particular figure, by all means email or talk to Greg or Sean about any figure you may have found intriguing and whose work you would like to investigate.

Some (by no means exhaustive!) suggestions:

‘PREHISTORY’ OF ANTHROPOLOGY/SOCIOLOGY
Herodotus, Tacitus, IbnKhaldun, GiambattistaVico

ENLIGHTENMENT SOCIAL THINKERS
Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, Nicolas de Condorcet, William Robertson

19th (to early 20th) CENTURY EVOLUTIONISM:
John Ferguson McLennan, Herbert Spencer, C. Staniland Wake, James G. Frazer, Jessie Weston, Edward Tylor, Adolf Bastian

EARLY FRENCH SOCIOLOGY
Auguste Comte, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

FRENCH TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHNOLOGY
Marcel Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen, Jean Rouch

(POST-)DURKHEIMIAN SOCIOLOGY (i.e. ANNÉE SOCIOLOGIQUE)
Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz, Marcel Granet, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Arnold van Gennep

DIFFUSIONISM
Robert Fritz Graebner, Father Wilhelm Schmidt, Grafton Elliot Smith, W.H.R. Rivers

EARLY (PROTO-?) FEMINISTS
Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Elsie Clew Parsons, Margaret Mead

(Boasian) ETHNOLOGY
Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Paul Radin, Alexander Goldenweiser

(Non-Boasian) AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
Clark Wissler, Ralph Linton

CULTURE & PERSONALITY/PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
W. H. R. Rivers, GezaRoheim, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Abraham Kardiner, A. I. Hallowell, Clyde Kluckhohn, George Spindler& Louise Spindler, John Honigmann, Melford Spiro, Anthony F. C. Wallace

BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY (e.g. STRUCTURE-FUNCTIONALISM)
W.H.R. Rivers, E. Evans-Pritchard, Raymond Firth, Meyer Fortes, Siegfried Nadel

MANCHESTER SCHOOL AND ITS OFFSHOOTS
Victor Turner, J. Clyde Mitchell, Elizabeth Bott, John Barnes

NEO-EVOLUTIONISM/CULTURAL ECOLOGY/CULTURAL MATERIALISM
Julian Steward, Leslie White, Elman Service, Marvin Harris, Roy Ellen, Roy Rappaport, (early) Marshall Sahlins, Robert Murphy

STRUCTURALISM
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Edmund Leach, (later) Marshall Sahlins

(NON-STRUCTURALIST) SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY
James Fernandez, David Schneider, (early) Sherry Ortner

TRANSACTIONALISM
Fredrik Barth, (early) Bruce Kapferer

STRUCTURAL (NEO-)MARXISM
Claude Meillassoux, Maurice Bloch, Maurice Godelier, Emmanuel Terray

(NON-STRUCTURALIST) NEO-MARXISM (including WORLD SYSTEM THEORY)
June Nash, Immanuel Wallerstein, Stanley Diamond, Bob Scholte

SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM
Eleanor Leacock, Evelyn Reed, Michelle Rosaldo, (early) Sherry Ortner

As indicated from the list above, some figures can be placed in more than one school (e.g. W.H.R. Rivers, Edmund Leach, Marshall Sahlins, etc.) depending upon the phase of their career. Interesting sources to consult for thumbnail sketches of many of the figures from earlier schools are Hays (1964) andLowie (1937). Kardiner and Preble (1961) (see pp. 6-7 of the Unit Outline) provide thumbnail sketches of figures in the American ethnological tradition and Culture-and-Personality. Adam Kuper’s(1st ed. 1973, 2nd ed. 1983) Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School is a valuable introductory guide for British social anthropology, especially structural-functionalism. Edited thematic volumes in the series ‘History of Anthropology’, under the series editorship of  George Stocking and issued by the University of Wisconsin Press, provide useful articles on a number of different figures in the history of theory (Rivers, etc.). Many of the anthropologists listed above (e.g. Lowie, Mead, Rivers, Evans-Pritchard, etc.) have had full-length intellectual biographies devoted to them; some have even written their own intellectual biographies (e.g. Schneider). The journal Current Anthropology has run a series of interviews with prominent figures in social and cultural anthropology, while the initial essay in many issues of the Annual Review of Anthropology is a reflective overview by a senior scholar of her/his role in the development of the field. Some issues of the Australian Anthropological Society newsletter have also included interviews with prominent figures in the history of anthropological thought ‘down under’. You may wish to browse through these articles in order to choose a figure. Certain figures do not fit any of the above rubrics neatly and you may choose such a figure and evaluate her/his work in the light of how it departs or synthesizes at least two of the perspectives treated in the course. The work of such mavericks as Gregory Bateson may be especially interesting in this regard.

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Other topics?:

The preceding discussion outlines the default topic, with its myriad specific options, for the second assignment. However, Greg and Sean are willing to discuss alternatives to this topic. For example, if somebody is particularly keen to treat the development of a (national or regional) tradition of social thought (Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, West African, etc.) not included in the examples above (which is admittedly biased toward American, British, French and (some) German thinkers), then that is quite possible, though it is advisable that one has special competence in the language(s) of that nation or region in order to undertake such a topic given the paucity of resources in English that may be available. A good place to start such an inquiry would be consulting:

Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins and Escobar, Arturo 2006 World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations in Systems of Power. Oxford: Berg.

The website of the Red di Antrologías del Mundo / World Anthropologies Network (RAM-WAN) ( http://www.ram-wan.net/html/home_e.htm ) is invaluable for such enquiry, including its e-journal (to which a link is provided on the RAM-WAN home page).

Another possible topic would be to investigate a particular enduring controversy in the history of social thought, such as arguments over the origin of incest taboo, the Virgin Birth controversy, the positing of a matriarchal stage of human evolution, etc. Yet another possibility, clearly linked to the default option of focusing upon a particular school or perspective, might be consideration of how a particular sub-discipline of anthropology or sociology first came into being (e.g. culture and personality studies, cross-cultural statistical analysis (e.g studies using the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)), sociological studies of ‘total’ institutions, etc.). However, if you wish to pursue any of these non-default topics you must consult with either Greg or Sean.

As for the first assignment, referencing in this essay should use the Harvard format or one of its variants (e.g. American Anthropologist format). References in the text are cited in parentheses, with last name(s), year of publication, and, where necessary, page number(s); for example, (Bloch 1983, pp. 45-46). The full bibliographic information then appears in a list of references or bibliography at the paper’s end arranged in alphabetical order, and for two or more works by the same author(s) in chronological order. References should be on the model of:

Bloch, Maurice1983Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship. London: Tavistock Publications.

The Reid Library in its LibGuides provides you with a guide to the Harvard citation format (http://libguides.is.uwa.edu.au/harvard?hs=a).

Text below copied from the unit outline:
Plagiarism: Be aware that the work you submit must be your own with no unacknowledged debt to some other writer or source. To pass off written work as your own, whether you have copied it from someone else or from somewhere else (be it a published writer, another person, a TV program, a library anthology, a lecture, a website or whatever) is to deprive yourself of the real benefits of this unit and to be guilty of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious offence! University policy is that plagiarism, the unacknowledged quotation of material from other people’s work, is a ground for failure. Moreover, your name is placed on a central plagiarism register. If you take notes from other sources (critical articles, background works, etc.) you must quote carefully and accurately, and acknowledge the quotation. Even if you paraphrase, you must still acknowledge that you are paraphrasing. Please refer to the University’s policy document for further information: <http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/students/policies/dishonesty>

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