TITLE

ANTHROPOLOGY AND AMERICA

AUTHOR(S)

Goldschmidt, Walter

PUB. DATE

June 1976

SOURCE

Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press);Jun1976, Vol. 57 Issue 1, p154

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

This article examines the significance of anthropology to the U.S. society. Anthropology as a discipline had its origin deep in the nineteenth century. That was the century of biology, the century in which the great advance in biological knowledge transformed Western metaphysics from theology into science. Anthropology had deep roots in this biological tradition, but from its very inception it took cognizance of that other, peculiarly human quality: man the myth-maker; man the creator; man the prisoner of habit and custom. Anthropology in the country is an old tradition. This is not surprising, for U.S. citizens were concerned with exotic cultures from the first landing with the assimilation of immigrants. In each of these relationships there was exploitation, expropriation and prejudice, and in this there was a conflict with the self-image of the country as independent, democratic and egalitarian. There emerged in anthropology essentially two lines of thought, one holding that behavioral patterns were expressive of biological differences; the other that they were products of cultural evolution. Both theories were essentially ethnocentric, taking progress as a given element in human history, seeing Western civilization as the finest product of cultural evolution just as man was viewed as the finest product of biological evolution.

ACCESSION #

17479345

Tags: ANTHROPOLOGY;  SOCIAL evolution;  EVOLUTION (Biology);  HISTORY;  SOCIAL sciences -- United States

 

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