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Robert Redfield and the Development of American Anthropology. Clifford Wilcox. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004. 235 pp.
The last quarter of the 20th century was remarkable for the ferociousness of the self-critical view that many anthropologists took of their discipline's development. Some of these are reduced to clichés in our historical narratives. Here are four examples: (1) Before the 1960s anthropologists were not self-aware of methods; (2) anthropological reports are helplessly tied to the presumptions and prejudices of the ethnographer; (3) anthropology was the handmaiden of colonialism; and (4) U.S. anthropology was perverted by the politics of the Cold War. Some of these aphorisms derive from careful historical scholarship of particular episodes or individuals, but are now detached from those contexts and are presented as Truths. Others derive from apocryphal stories and have also entered our lexicon as Truths about our discipline.
These stories help shape our professional identities; they structure our perceptions of our discipline and suggest to nonanthropologists how to think about anthropology. It is therefore important that we parse our historical narratives carefully. We must resist essentialism in our historical conversations and approach our discipline's history with the same awareness of the...