Not Really a View from Without: The Relations of Social Anthropology and Sociology

Abstract

This chapter argues that the histories of social anthropology and sociology in Britain have been so closely intertwined and overlapping that they cannot really be seen as external to one another at all. The two disciplines have common origins in the social thought of the Enlightenment. This was an enquiry into the character of the emergent, modern society of contemporary Europe, with a view to realizing the conditions for human emancipation from tyranny, ignorance, and poverty. By the early 1950s, sociology at the London School of Economics started to acquire the coherence and momentum that would power its lift-off in the 1960s. Many sociologists and anthropologists were attracted by the new analytical possibilities offered by structuralism, but they were also drawn by external circumstances to address issues of social change. The resurgence of Marxism, as much a feature of the late 1960s and 1970s as the rise of structuralism, was much more a response to events in the world than a movement internal to the realm of ideas.

Bringing Britain into being: Sociology, anthropology and British lives

“…Having said this, many scholars move comfortably between various aspects of disciplinary identities, and affiliating as sociologist or anthropologist are part and parcel of their professional identity formations (cf Mills). This we suggest is testimony to the overlapping and intertwined intellectual and institutional histories of the disciplines, a relation that led John Peel (2005) to describe the subjects as "siblings who came to be brought up in different environments, but who still remain in regular contact with one another, and whose resemblances are so close that they are sometimes mistaken for one another" (2005, p. 70).…”

“…There are three broad points we would like to make in regards to the history of this relationship. The first is that what is striking when reading Mills' (2008) and Peel's (2005) Gellnerkey figures who moved effortlessly across the disciplinary divide (Peel, 2005).…”

“…This contemporary unease is one that resonates with recent history and the disquiet caused by the Thatcherite and the New Right's attack on the social sciences in the 1980s. This affected both disciplines, but especially sociology (Peel, 2005;Mills, 2008;Spencer, 2000). Indicative of this era is a revealing passage from Gledhill: "anthropology was spared much of the active aggression manifest towards sociology by neo-conservatives, even if it was deemed useless (for studying 'the pre-nuptial practices of the inhabitants of the Upper Volta', as Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher's chief bull-dog, put it)" (2008, p. 169-170).…”

The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in Britain

“…In the newly created African universities, anthropology was often 'demoted to a subdiscipline of sociology' or excluded altogether (Sichone, 2003, p. 478;Peel, 2005).…”

A CHILD OF THE EMPIRE: BRITISH SOCIOLOGY AND COLONIALISM, 1940s-1960s

“…Another reason for the rising fortunes of sociology in the colonies was that educated Africans increasingly saw anthropology as a “handmaiden of colonialism” (Fage, , p. 401) and insisted that they “deserved to be studied by the type of scientists that studied civilized societies—the sociologists” (Jones, , p. 286) . In the newly created African universities, “anthropology was demoted to a subdiscipline of sociology” or excluded altogether (Sichone, , p. 478; Peel, ). A survey of Egyptian social scientists in 1961 found two dozen sociologists but just four anthropologists (Rashad, , pp.…”