Editors' Introduction

On History for the Present: Revisiting George Stocking's Influential Rejection of “Presentism”

“…It could also imply that the history of anthropology should be written by anthropologists themselves, using anthropological research methods, reflexive interpretative approaches, and materials like oral histories rather than archival research exclusively. Because these possible messages of the title were themes in Hallowell's teaching, it is understandable that they have been attributed to his essay (e.g., Darnell , 400; , vi; Darnell and Gleach , viii–ix; , vii; , x). But to read the essay as published is to discover that it is something else again—that it actually proposes a triumphant narrative in which scientific anthropology emerges from the “proto‐anthropology” of mythology and religion by cultural evolution.…”