James Urry - Before Social Anthropology: Essays on the History of British Anthropology

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Studies in Anthropology and History

Studies in Anthropology and History is a series that will develop new theoretical perspectives, and combine comparative and ethnographic studies with historical research.
Edited by Nicholas Thomas, The Australian National University, Canberra.
VOLUME 1	Structure and Process in a Melanesian Society: Ponams progress in the Twentieth Century
ACHSAH H. CARRIER AND JAMES G. CARRIER
VOLUME 2	Androgynous Objects: String bags and gender in Central New Guinea
MAUREEN ANNE MACKENZIE
VOLUME 3	Time and the Work of Anthropology: Critical essays 1971 1991
JOHANNES FABIAN
VOLUME 4	Colonial Space: Spatiality in the discourse of German South West Africa 18841915
JOHN NOYES
VOLUME 5	Catastrophe and Creation: The transformation of an African culture
KAJSA EKHOLM FRIEDMAN
VOLUME 6	Before Social Anthropology: Essays on the history of British anthropology
JAMES URRY
VOLUME 7	The Ghotul in Muria Society
SIMERAN MAN SINGH GELL
OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION
The Gifts of the Kamula
MICHAEL WOOD
This book is part of a series. The publisher will accept continuation orders which may be cancelled at any time and which provide for automatic billing and shipping of each title in the series upon publication. Please write for details.

James Urry

Before Social

Anthropology

Essays on the history of
British anthropology

COPYRIGHT 1993
Published by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Chapter 1 was originally published as the Hocart Prize Essay in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4557 (1972).

Chapter 3 was originally published in the journal Canberra Anthropology 5, 5885 (1982).

Chapter 4 was originally published in Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology (ed. George W. Stocking, Jr), pp. 83105. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1984.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Urry, James.

Before social anthropology: essays in the history of British anthropology / James Urry.

p. cm. -- (Studies in anthropology and history)

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Anthropology--Great Britain--History. I. Title. II. Series.

GN17.3.G7U77 1993

301.0941--dc20	9310749
CIP

DESIGNED BY	Maureen Anne MacKenzie Em Squared Main Street Michelago NSW 2620 Australia
FRONT COVER	Engraving by the Brothers Dalziel from J.G. Wood The Natural History of Man, Being an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Uncivilized Races of Man [vol 2] Australia, New Zealand, [etc]. London, George Routledge 1870.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 3-7186-5292-7 (hbk)

ISBN 978-1-136-64424-5 (ePub)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

To Geoff and Joyce for their support

Contents

Preface

A fter leaving school, I was employed in the library of the Royal Anthropological Institute, then situated close to the British Museum in Bedford Square in central London. I had always been interested in archaeology and anthropology seemed a closely related subject. Access to the institutes splendid collection of books, journals, pamphlets and manuscripts, amassed since the 1840s and mostly stored away in the basement of the institutes premises, proved irresistible. The more I read the more I became interested in anthropology, and rather than becoming a librarian I decided to enter university and study anthropology.

While the anthropology course at University College London proved much broader than the social anthropology taught in most other British universities, it still seemed rather narrow to one who had glimpsed the historical dimensions of the subject preserved in the institutes collection. My first major publication in anthropology was written while still an undergraduate and was awarded the Hocart Prize Essay of the institute (see Chapter 1), whose work in promoting anthropological research was the subject of the paper. Postgraduate research at Oxford on Russian Mennonite communities took me away from further research and writing and into the history of anthropology, although my historical research into nineteenth-century Mennonite life was not entirely separate from a consideration of the larger context of the history of anthropology. Teaching courses on the history of anthropology in Australia and New Zealand forced me to widen my perspectives on anthropologys past. I am most grateful to the many students who have taken these courses over the years and forced me to think and rethink my understanding of anthropologys past.

I am also most grateful to Miss B.J. Kirkpatrick, for many years the librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute, who allowed her library assistant to do more than just collect and replace books on library shelves. A strange fate led us both to Australia to work together in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies library and, via Katherine Mansfield and family friendship, to maintain a close connection ever since. While claiming to know little about the subject, she has always been willing to assist me in my anthropological research, supplying me with copies of sources unobtainable in New Zealand.

The introduction and three of the chapters (2, 5 and 6) appear here for the first time; the other papers are reproduced as they first appeared with a few minor changes to format and some correction. Nicholas Thomas of the Australian National University first suggested that I bring together some of my published and unpublished writings on the history of anthropology in book form and kept me to the task of revising and finishing papers which were gathering dust in my files. Individual acknowledgements are listed in the notes to particular chapters.

INTRODUCTION

The search for unity in British anthropology, 18801920

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