Here the critics have seized upon a

Di sini kritik mengambil momen singkat diSejarah antropologi, tapi penting terbatas episodedalam British antropologi, dan telah diproyeksikan saat inike seluruh bidang di Britania dan Amerika.Mereka telah berhasil begitu baik bahwa tampaknya wajib untukmahasiswa pascasarjana proposal, makalah dan disertasi (padaUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, setidaknya) untuk memulaidengan kata-kata yang menyatakan bahwa "antropologi selalu diabaikansejarah, tetapi sekarang kita tahu lebih baik dan saya benar-benar akan memperkenalkan sejarah dalam pekerjaan saya."Sejumlah mengganggu orang tua mereka telah menerima ide ini juga.Memang benar bahwa, untuk khusus oretical alasan, Radcliffe -Brown dan Malinowski berpendapat bahwa hal itu tidak perlu,dan mungkin tidak mungkin, untuk merekonstruksi sejarah diuntuk melakukan analisis ilmiah masyarakat dan budayatanpa catatan tertulis. Tetapi berpengaruh ketika mereka berada diInggris untuk sementara, pandangan ini tidak pernah memenangkan penerimaan diAmerika Di Amerika Serikat, dari waktu Franz Boas mulaimengajar pada tahun 1890, sejarah menjadi perhatian pentinguntuk sebagian besar antropolog bekerja. Di sejauhseperti Boas "sekolah" memiliki nama itu adalah AmerikaSejarah sekolah. Boas, Kroeber, Wissler, E. C. Parsons,Bunzel, Dixon, darisaiful, Goldenweiser, Sapir, Spier,Herskovits, Linton, Murdock, lebih rendah, dan banyak orang lain berpendapattentang sejarah, mendesak studi, bekerja dengan metodeuntuk kembali masa lalu tidak tertulis, dan mengeluh tentangthe absence of historicity in the schemes of the evolutionistsand diffusionists whom they criticized. They regularlyand normally incorporated history into much of what theydid, and they worked in departments together with archaeologistswhose major concern was history. In one of his many farsighted papers, Boas argued forthe importance of the study of history and historical processesfor future progress in anthropology. In 1920 hewrote,In order to understand history it is necessary to know not onlyhow things are, but how they have come to be.... It is truethat we can never hope to obtain incontrovertible data relatingto the chronological sequence of events, but certain broad outlinescan be ascertained with a high degree of probability,even of certainty.As soon as these methods are applied, primitive societyloses the appearance of absolute stability which is conveyedto the student who sees a certain people only at a certain giventime. All cultural forms rather appear in a constant state offlux and subject to fundamental modifications. [ 19 20:3 1$315,emphasis added]Melville J. Herskovits,throughout his career,railed at"the ahistorical approach to the Negro past," arguingagainst the myth that the Negro had no history. And, moregenerally, he would get furious at those who failed to recognizethat all peoples had been on earth equally long."We cannot too often emphasize the fact we might sayAksioma bahwa ada budaya hidup statis,"ia menulis(1948:479); Semua memiliki sejarah yang kompleks. Untuk alasan ini iatidak akan menerima ide yang hidup berburu dan mengumpulkanorang dapat digunakan untuk mewakili kondisisebelumnya tahap evolusi. Ironisnya, kecil tapi vokalband dari kritikus antropologi telah baru saja datang ke depanberdebat bahwa Bushmen Afrika Barat daya telahsejarah panjang dan kompleks antropolog itu diabaikan sebagaimereka dibangun Bushmen menurut gambar mereka sendiridan politik (Lihat Barnard 1992, 1993 Kuper untuk ulasanKalahari perdebatan besar). Apakah ini MelHerskovits's dendam?Dihadapkan dengan bukti-bukti sejarah keprihatinanBoas, Kroeber dan sejenisnya, beberapa kritikus merespon, berlaku:"Tapi itu sebelum Benediktus dan Mead dan Inggrisfungsionalis yang terhapus semua sejarah.''? Tapi itutidak benar baik. Siapa pun yang belajar antropologi diAmerika Serikat di 1 950s tahu bahwa sejarah alamdan bagian normal dari bidang dimasa itu. Julian Stewardevolusi multilineal, tentu saja, diberitahu oleh danberkaitan dengan sejarah dan juga dengan evolusi. Pelayanberharap untuk memperoleh generalisasi yang lintas budaya dan evolusi dari studi budaya-historis khusus. Di Columbia, mana saya pergi ke sekolah pascasarjana, kursus dan wacana orang seperti Morton Fried, ConradArensberg, Joseph Greenberg, Charles Wagley, danHaroldConklin adalah jenuh dengan sejarah. Disertasi saya sendiriPenelitian (dimulai pada 1 958) melibatkan kombinasikerja lapangan etnografi dan Rekonstruksi sejarah,menggunakan bahan-bahan tertulis maupun lisan kesaksian. Tidak ada yangpernah bilang itu aneh dan aku tidak mendapatkan masalahpendanaan untuk lapangan dari Ford Foundation ataumendapatkan itu diterbitkan pada tahun 1965.Untuk mengulang, hanya karena kelalaian disengaja atau tidakdapat itu dipertahankan antropologi Amerika itu pernahumumnya ahistoris, sementara ahistoricity terkenal dariInggris antropologi terbatas waktu yang relatif singkat, dan tidak berarti terlibat atau memasukkan semua praktisi.Afiicanists Inggris bahkan seperti menonjol sebagai IsaacShapera, Van E-PritchardM,. G. Smith, J ohnB arnes, S. F.Nadel, dan aku Cunnison menerbitkan studi sejarah.Hal ini sangat ironis bahwa kritik yang mengklaim bahwa antropologiahistoris harus sendiri memperlakukan sejarahAntropologi jadi cavalierly, jadi amateurishly, danJadi out-of-menjaga dengan Wahyu Roh (Lihat stoking[1968] untuk diskusi singkat mengenai masalah ini). Fabian'skotor karakterisasi bidang dalam waktu dan yang lainsebuah contoh utama. Hal ini bahkan lebih mencolok, diberikan seharusnyapenekanan baru pada sejarah, pernyataan yang menyapuseperti ini pergi tidak teruji dan tak tertandingi.Berikut adalah contoh lain dari klaim seperti itu. Marcus danFischer menulis bahwa setelah Perang Dunia II, ketika "Amerikamuncul sebagai kekuatan ekonomi yang dominan... ParsonianSosiologi menjadi kerangka hegemonik, bukan hanyaSosiologi untuk pemula, tetapi untuk antropologi, psikologi, politikilmu pengetahuan, dan model pembangunan ekonomi serta"(1986:10). ini adalah suatu klaim yang menakjubkan, dan itu akansangat menarik untuk melihat mereka mencoba untuk menunjukkan denganbukti-bukti yang berasal dari sumber-sumber demikian sebagai antropologikarya-karya yang dihasilkan dari perspektif Parsonian, antropolog'kutipan Parsons, atau penawaran kursus diParsonian modus. Penyelidikan semacam itu menunjukkan bahwaSosiologi parsonian tidak pernah yang berpengaruh dalam antropologi,Apalagi hegemonik, kecuali "hegemonik" berarti"beberapa apa populer di Harvard dan Chicago."Parsons telahbeberapa pengaruh untuk waktu antara mahasiswa di HarvardDepartemen Sosial hubungan, terutama pada DavidSchneider dan Clifford Geertz, dan mungkin, sebagai hasilmigrasi ini dua, di Chicago (Schneider1995: 82-83). Itu pasti tidak paradigma berkuasa diDepartemen Antropologi di Arizona, Berkeley, Columbia,Cornell, Michigan, North Carolina, barat laut,Pennsylvania, Stanford, UCLA, atau Yale, namasekolah pasca sarjana besar periode itu. Bahkan sepintasProgram pertemuan tahunanAAA dalam 19 50s, atau antropolog Amerika danJurnal Southwestern antropologi, utamaJurnal Amerika pada waktu itu, OI-panduan AAA DepartemenAntropologi, pertama diterbitkan pada 196243, akanmenunjukkan bagaimana tidak pernyataan ini."Pernyataan semacam itu panggilan untuk pemeriksaan, penerimaan tidak kasual.Representasi antropologi di sejarah danalam telah menjadi faktor utama dalam banyak baru-baruteori sastra, dan sekarang saatnya untuk subjek ini konstruksiuntuk pengawasan kritis yang sama bahwa kita harus memberikanuntuk klaim kebenaran lain.

Here the critics have seized upon a brief moment in the
history of anthropology,an important but limited episode
in British anthropology, and have projected this moment
onto the whole of the field in both Britain and America.
They have succeeded so well that it seems mandatory for
graduate student proposals, papers, and dissertations (at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, at least) to begin
with words to the effect that "anthropology always ignored
history, but now we know better and I will really introduce history in my work."A disturbing number of their elders have accepted this idea as well.
It is true that, for particular the oretical reasons, Radcliffe-
Brown and Malinowski argued that it was unnecessary,
and probably impossible, to reconstruct histories in
order to do scientific analyses of societies and cultures
without written records. But as influential as they were in
England for a while, this view never won acceptance in
America

In the United States, from the time Franz Boas began
teaching in the 1890s, history became of paramount concern
for the large majority of working anthropologists. In so far
as the Boas "school" has a name it is the American
Historical school. Boas, Kroeber,Wissler,E . C. Parsons,
Bunzel, Dixon, Lowie, Goldenweiser, Sapir, Spier,
Herskovits, Linton, Murdock, Lesser, and many others argued
about history, urged its study, worked out methods
for recapturing the unwritten past, and complained about
the absence of historicity in the schemes of the evolutionists
and diffusionists whom they criticized. They regularly
and normally incorporated history into much of what they
did, and they worked in departments together with archaeologists
whose major concern was history. In one of his many farsighted papers, Boas argued for
the importance of the study of history and historical processes
for future progress in anthropology. In 1920 he
wrote,

In order to understand history it is necessary to know not only
how things are, but how they have come to be.... It is true
that we can never hope to obtain incontrovertible data relating
to the chronological sequence of events, but certain broad outlines
can be ascertained with a high degree of probability,
even of certainty.
As soon as these methods are applied, primitive society
loses the appearance of absolute stability which is conveyed
to the student who sees a certain people only at a certain given
time. All cultural forms rather appear in a constant state of
flux and subject to fundamental modifications. [ 19 20:3 1$
315,emphasis added]

Melville J. Herskovits,throughout his career,railed at
"the ahistorical approach to the Negro past," arguing
against the myth that the Negro had no history. And, more
generally, he would get furious at those who failed to recognize
that all peoples had been on earth equally long.
"We cannot too often emphasize the fact we might say
the axiom that no living culture is static," he wrote
(1948:479); all had complex histories. For this reason he
would not accept the idea that a living hunting and gathering
people could be used to represent the conditions of an
earlier evolutionary stage. Ironically, a small but vocal
band of critics of anthropology has recently come forward
arguing that the Bushmen of southwest Africa have had a
long and complex history that anthropologist ignored as
they constructed the Bushmen according to their own images
and politics (see Barnard 1992, Kuper 1993 for reviews
of the Great Kalahari Debate). Is this Mel
Herskovits's revenge?

Faced with the evidence of the historical concerns of
Boas, Kroeber, and their ilk, some critics respond, in effect:
"But that was before Benedict and Mead and the British
functionalists who wiped out all history.''? But that is
not true either. Anyone who studied anthropology in the
United States in the 1 950s knows that history was a natural
and normal part of the field in those days. Julian Steward's
multilineal evolution was, of course, informed by and
concerned with history as well as with evolution. Steward
hoped to derive cross-cultural and evolutionary generalizations from the study of culture-historical particulars. At Columbia, where I went to graduate school, the courses and discourses of people like Morton Fried, Conrad
Arensberg, Joseph Greenberg, Charles Wagley, and
HaroldConklin were saturated with history. My own dissertation
research (begun in 1 958) involved a combination
of ethnographic fieldwork and historical reconstruction,
using both written materials and oral testimony. No one
ever told me it was at all unusual and I had no problem getting
funding for fieldwork from the Ford Foundation or
getting it published in 1965.
To repeat, only through ignorance willful or not
can it be maintained that American anthropology was ever
generally ahistorical, while the famous ahistoricity of
British anthropology was confined to a relatively short period,and by no means involved or included all of its practitioners.
Even such prominent British Afiicanists as Isaac
Shapera,E vans-PritchardM, . G. Smith,J ohnB arnes,S . F.
Nadel,and I an Cunnison published historical studies.
It is particularly ironic that the critics who claim that anthropology
is ahistorical should themselves treat the history
of anthropology so cavalierly, so amateurishly, and
so out-of-keeping with the historicist spirit (see Stocking
[1968] for a concise discussion of this problem). Fabian's
gross characterization of the field in Time and the Other is
a prime example. It is even more striking, given the supposed
new emphasis on history, that sweeping statements
like these go unexamined and unchallenged.
Here is another example of such a claim. Marcus and
Fischer write that after World War II, when "America
emerged as the dominant economic force.... Parsonian
sociology became a hegemonic framework, not merely
for sociology, but for anthropology, psychology, political
science, and models of economic development as well"
(1986:10). This is an astonishing claim, and it would be
very interesting to see them attempt to demonstrate it with
evidence derived from such sources as anthropological
works produced from a Parsonian perspective, anthropologists'
citations of Parsons, or course offerings in a
Parsonian mode. Such an investigation would show that
Parsonian sociology was never that influential in anthropology,
let alone hegemonic, unless "hegemonic" means
"some what popular at Harvard and Chicago. "Parsons had
some influence for a time among students at the Harvard
Department of Social Relations, notably on David
Schneider and Clifford Geertz, and perhaps, as the result
of the migration of these two, at Chicago (Schneider
1995: 82-83). It was certainly not the reigning paradigm in
the anthropology departments at Arizona, Berkeley, Columbia,
Cornell, Michigan, North Carolina, Northwestern,
Pennsylvania, Stanford, UCLA, or Yale, to name the
major graduate schools of that period. Even a cursory examination
of the programs of the annual meetings of the
AAA in the 19 50s, or of the American Anthropologist and
the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, the major
American journals of that time, OI- of the AAA Guide to Departments
of Anthropology, first issued in 196243, will
show how unlikely this assertion is."
Such statements call for examination, not casual acceptance.
The representation of anthropology's history and
nature has become a major element in much of the recent
theoretical literature, and it is time to subject these constructions
to the same critical scrutiny that we should give
to any other truth claims.