A History of Anthropology

by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Finn Sivert Nielsen

This is the first book to cover the entire history of social and cultural anthropology in a single volume. Beginning with a summary of the discipline in the nineteenth century, exploring major figures such as Morgan and Tylor, it goes on to provide a comprehensive overview of the discipline in the twentieth century.The bulk of the book is devoted to themes and controversies characteristic of post First World War anthropology, from structural functionalism via structuralism to hermeneutics, cultural ecology, discourse analysis and, most recently, globalization and postmodernism. The authors emphasise throughout the need to see changes in the discipline in a wider social, political and intellectual context. This is a timely, concise history of a major discipline, in an engaging and thought-provoking narrative, that will appeal to students of anthropology worldwide.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2001

About the author

Geir Thomas Hylland Eriksen was a Norwegian anthropologist known for his scholarly and popular writing on globalization, identity, ethnicity, and nationalism. He was Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2015–2016), as well as the Editor of Samtiden (1993–2001), Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift (1993–1997), the Journal of Peace Research, and Ethnos.
Hylland Eriksen was among the most prolific and highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and had been recognized for his remarkable success in bringing an anthropological perspective to a broader, non-academic audience. In Norway, Hylland Eriksen was a well-known public intellectual whose advocacy of diversity and cultural pluralism had earned both praise and scorn. Right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, cited Eriksen critically in his manifesto and during his 2012 trial.
In the academy and beyond, Hylland Eriksen had been highly decorated for his scholarship. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Stockholm University (2011), the University of Copenhagen (2021), and Charles University in Prague (2021), as well as one of anthropology's most prestigious honors, the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography's Gold Medal (2022). He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Overview of a Complex Field

When you start out studying anthropology, you usually get hit from all sides with a plethora of ideas and “classic” works you must read. You become aware that anthropologists have been writing since the late 19th century, though there were related texts (in some way) stretching back to antiquity. But if you are in a university, the professor will talk knowingly about current work as well. You hear about all kinds of theories, with different defining names, that boost or dismiss previous work endlessly. It’s quite confusing. And it depends whether your institution is in the USA, in the UK, or in Europe. (What to say of Asia, Latin America, or Africa?) Once-separate national traditions of anthropological direction have intertwined to a large degree, but older, more diverse trajectories still exist to some extent. Lots of controversies have risen and disappeared, others still remain. How to make sense out of all this? Who were the creators of anthropology in the past? What approaches did they take? Where did they work and how did they do what they did? You can try to read your way through oceans of text, from author to author, but good luck with that, you’d better be young, otherwise you won’t live long enough to reach the end.

Or---you can read this book! I’m really pleased I bought it. It’s the best summary of the whole field I’ve ever found, written very clearly with a minimum of jargon by two Scandinavian professors. It explains the foundations of the field, tells of the lives and work of a few of the most famous scholars, but supplies the objections that others had to their work. You can read how British, French, and American approaches really differed at first, but over the years began to cross-fertilize. It tells how anthropology did or didn’t mesh with colonial rule in the British and French cases, and how Americans saw anthropology as a way to preserve what they thought were dying cultures of North America. From Malinowski to Margaret Mead, from Gluckman to Geertz, all the famous names appear. Let’s not forget the 1960s graduate student hero, Claude Levi-Strauss. You will perceive, along with the authors, that anthropology can never be a science; it’s an art form. From the view of culture as functional, anthropologists moved on to analysis of structure, especially kinship, and then by the 1960s, more to symbolism and the inner aspects of culture. It’s a long history full of the names of authors and trends, but it’s all here, put together in a very understandable form. Marxism, feminism, modernism and post-modernism are stirred into the mix towards the end. If you emerge finally without a better understanding of how anthropology arrived at its present condition, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

[Timár_Krisztina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mit jelent embernek lenni?

Ehhez a kérdéshez tartozik például az, hogy melyik korban mit jelentett szembesülni azzal, ami „más”, ami nem „én” vagyok, illetve nem „mi” vagyunk. Többek között ezt kutatja az antropológia. Az sem mindegy, hogy mikor/hol mire használták ezt a szembesülést, adott esetben szembeállítást. Mert lehet eszköze a kíváncsiságnak („ők hogyan viszonyulnak a világ jelenségeihez?”), lehet alapja barátkozásnak és ellenségeskedésnek (az ellenséget ismerni legalább annyira érdeke az embernek, mint a szövetségest), lehet eszköze az önismeretnek („az ő szemükkel nézzük magunkat, így mást is meglátunk, mint amit szoktunk”), sőt a saját identitás megerősítésének is („mi nem olyanok vagyunk, hanem ilyenek”). 

Részletes értékelés a blogon:
https://gyujtogeto-alkoto.blog.hu/202...

[Rania · Rating 5 out of 5]

very helpful and necessary resource for beginners in anthropology fields .

[evi · Rating 3 out of 5]

zapamatuju si tohle všechno ke státnicím? stay tuned for may 2027

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2667431.html

Unfortunately this book didn't scratch my itch - not much more than simply listing historical anthropologists and their wider intellectual context, with frustratingly little about the content of their actual work; the fact that they argued with each other intensely is recorded, but what they argued about isn't really, except when it's gossip (how Margaret Mead met Gregory Bateson). I really didn't learn as much from this as I had hoped, and it didn't give me much in the way of pointers for future reading either.

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

A required course for Anthro majors at CU. This book is picked only to represent the course. I can't remember the Prof's name but he was one of the old guard in the dept. My last semester... Date is approximate.

[Maria]

Goofy

[m. galal · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب مدهش، مدخل تاريخي غني جدا بالمعلومات والأفكار. بداية مُحمسة جدا لي لدراسة الأنثربولوجيا.

[Стефан Петков · Rating 4 out of 5]

Чудесно въвеждащо в материята обобщаващо изследване на двама водещи скандинавски антрополози. Големият минус е ужасната пунктуация - очевидно коректорът (ако изобщо го има - не е посочен) не си е свършил работата.

[Janet Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for ANTH 304

[Karrarabd · Rating 2 out of 5]

الترجمة ليست افضل شيء ... العرض التاريخي كان لعلم الاجتماع مع عرض لافكار فلسفية

[Hanie rezanejad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such an amazing exploration of Anthropology from its beginnings to the present. It attempts to explain many important topics in anthropology with a high level of precision.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo in Norway. Finn Sivert Nielsen is a retired associate professor of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Eriksen and Nielsen wrote A History of Anthropology. I read the 2017 edition. Eriksen and Nielsen wrote, “The book is chronologically ordered. Beginning with the ‘proto anthropologies’ from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment, it continues with the creation of academic anthropology and the growth of classical sociology during the nineteenth century. The third chapter concentrates on the four men who, by consensus, are considered the founding fathers of twentieth century anthropology” (Eriksen & Nielsen ix). Eriksen and Neilsen wrote “the men whose work will form the backbone of this chapter were Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, and Marcel Mauss” (Eriksen & Nielsen 47). I read the book on the Kindle. Eriksen and Nielsen writes “the fourth indicates how the work of the founding fathers of the field of anthropology was continued, and diversified, by their students” (Eriksen & Nielsen ix). Chapters 5 and 6 covers the field of anthropology “from about 1946 to about 1968” (Eriksen & Nielsen ix). Chapter 7 covers the field of anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 8 covers the field of anthropology in the 1980s. Chapter 9 covers the field of anthropology from the 1990s until the time the book was published. Both Eriksen and Nielsen are characters in the book. I think that if the reader keeps this in mind, the book serves as a good introduction to the history of anthropology.

[Noora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hidaslukuinen tenttikirja, jota en ehtinyt lukea kokonaan ja jota oli paikka paikoin aika hankala ymmärtää.

[Islam · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s Hard to understand that book