130 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.

Levi-Strauss. C. 1962. Toremum. Trans. R. Needham. Boston (/963).Marett, R. R. 1908a. The threshold of religion. London.---. 1908h A sociological view of comparative religion. Soc. Ret!. 1:48-60.---, 1941. A Jmeyman at Oxford. London.Maren, R. R., I'd. 190B. Anthropology and the classics. New York (1966).Murray, G 1907. The rise of the Greek epic. Oxford.Needham, R. 1974. Surmise, discovery, and rhetoric. In Remarks and inlif'ntiom: Skep-

tical essays about kinship, 109-72. London.Persistiany,]. 1960. Durkheim's letter to Radcliffe-Brown. In Essays on 5Qdology and phi-

losophy, I'd. K. H. Wolff, 317-24. New York (964).Perry, R.]. 1975. Radcliffe-Brown and Kropotkin: The heritage of anarchism in British

social anthropology. Kmeber Anrh. Soc. Papers 51152:61-65.Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 192Z. The Andaman i5/aJU:len. Cambridge.Schapera, L n.d. Social anthropology. [Notes on the lectures of Radcliffe-Brown at

Capetown University, 1924?] in the library of the Institute of Social AnthropologyOxford. '

Stewa~t, Jessie. 1959. Jane Ellen Harrison: A portrait from lerren. London.Stockmg, G. W., Jr. 1976. Radcliffe-Brown, Lowic, and The historyoferhnological theory.

H!st. Amh. Newsl. 3(2):5-8.Tax, S. 1932. Primitive religion: Notes on the lectures of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, winter

1932. Anlh. Tomorrow 4(2) (1956):3-41.

~start, A., ed. 1979. l.ettres de Radcliffe-Brown a Mauss. Etudes durkheimiennes 4:2-7.W~.son, E. G. 1946. But 1{) what purpose: The autobiogmphy of a contemporary. London.

tre, 1.. 1981. Mrs. Bates and Mr. Brown: An examination of Rodney Needham'sallegations. Oceania 51:193-210. •

Late in 1951, an exchange took place in the pages of the American Anrhro-pologist between George Murdock of Yale University and Raymond Firth ofthe London School of Economics. The immediate occasion was the appear-ance the preceding year of African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (Radcliffe-Brown & Forde, eds. 1950), in which exemplary products of two decades ofempirical research were analyzed in the context of a theoretical orientationthere given its final forrnularion after four decades of elaboration and refine-ment. The volume's contributors included most of the leading figures of theelite Association of Social Anthropologists, which five years previously hadsorted itself out from the morley assemblage of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute (ASAM: 7/23-4/46). As the contributors' institutional identifica-tions in the table of contents testified, they by then occupied professorial posi-tions from which they were [Q dominate academic anthropology in the Brit-ish sphere over the next two decades. Looking back from that later vantagepoint, their epigonal historian described them as "an exceptionally tightly-knit professional group, with a revolutionary methodology, shared standardsof training and evaluation, and a fairly coherent theoretical framework" (Kuper1973:9-10). From the perspective of their transatlantic critic in 1951, theyseemed to have all of "the characteristic earmarks of a 'school'"-which Mur-dock regarded as per se grounds for questioning their membership in an in-ternational scientific community of "anthropologists" (1951:470).

Although granting them an "average level of eth nographic competence andtheoretical suggestiveness probably unequalled by any comparable group else-where in the world," Murdock felt that their work was characterized by "off-setting limitations" further justifying their exclusion from the anrhropologi-

RADCLIFFE·BROWNAND BRITISH

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGYGEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.

Two Views of British Social Anthropology at Midcentury

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132 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.

cal community: narrowness of substantive and ethnographic interests, theo-retical parochialism, "disinterest" in general ethnography, "neglect" of historyand the processes of cultural change in time, and a "widespread indifferenceto psychology." Not only did their narrow focus on kinship and social struc-ture lead to a "fractionating tendency inconsistent with functional theory"and greatly increase "the dangers of reificanon," it also implied the abandon-ment of "the special province of anthropology in relation to its sister disci-plines": "Alone among the anthropologists of the world the British make nouse of the culture concept." They were, in fact, not anthropologists at all,but "professionals of another caeego-e," and like "many other sociologists,"they tried "to discover valid laws by the intensive study ... of a very smalland non-random sample of all societies," without adequate "comparative orcross-cultural validation." Having resolved his totemic "ambivalence and un-easiness" by defining them as sociological fowl rather than anthropologicalfish, Murdock was willing to let the British do their own thing-even if itwas, as sociology, outdated by a generation (l95l:467~72).

Murdock's posture was more than a bit paradoxical. He was himself some-what marginal to the characteristically Boasian perspective from which hecriticized the British; charging them with abandoning history for social typol-ogy, he was nonetheless, as a critic and outsider, himself impelled toward in-tellectual typology. Perhaps because Firth was a non-Africanist insider "notafraid to be called eclectic," he viewed "Contemporary British Social Anrhro-~logy" in somewhat less monolithic and mote historical terms-as the quali-fving temr;ral.adjective implicitly suggests. Although granting the strong in-fluence of their personal ethnographic experience," Firth suggested that thealleged narrowness of British social anthropologists was more apparent thanreal. More ethnography was "read than cited," and transatlantic movements~f staff and stu.dents h~d "spread knowledge of the more important conrribu-t~ons to Amenca~ sO~lalanthropology." Bur it was in fact by isolating a par-ticular sphere of mqurry and developing a "more precise framework of ideasand substantial propositions" that British social anthropology had "got itsch.aracter." However, that character was not peculiarly British, and it wasoriented toward a broader e· tifi 'Th' ,.. '"' scren I c community. at this commumty wasnot prtrnarllv composed of human biologists, students of primitive technol-ogy, a~d ~rc~eologists was of small moment. What was important was notto rnamtam an old fashioned-and spurious-unified science of man" butrather to strengthen mea - gI 1' d 'I' '. ." run U mter lSCLpmarv connections with other so-cial sCiences: sociology in th "psvch ' '. .. e narrow sense, psyc ologv, economics, politi-cal SCience, jurisprudcno-, and "such history as is problem oriented" (1951.475-80), '

h But if he insisted that it was by being sociological that British social an-t ropology had achieved its "unequalled" ethnographic competence and rheo-

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRlTISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY I3J

j

rerical suggestiveness, Firth was nonetheless willing to grant that "much ofwhat Murdock has said is just and calls more for reflection than reply." Re-sponding to the serious scientific issue underlying Murdock's specific charges,Firth treated various aspects of "the central problem of allowance for varia-tion." In general, his approach was, first, to insist on the legitimacy of a scien-tific strategy ("generalizations in the natural sciences are assumed to be validfor a wide field of phenomena without the need of testing every instance");then, to grant in effect certain limitations in its actual implementation ("theunwillingness or inability of the theorist to state clearly how far he was de-scribing the behavior of an abstract model created by himself, and how farhe intended his analysis to describe the behavior of people in an actual namedsociety at a given period of time"); and then, to suggest either that not allBritish were guilty of such failings, or that recent practice showed signs oftaking them into consideration ("this view, however, is ceasing to be an effec-tive British position"). After twenty-five years in which it had "done muchto establish a more significant typology," British social anthropology now ap-peared to be "moving slowly and unevenly toward a more systematic studyof variation, including variation over time" (1951:478-88).

Because it so neatly juxtaposes the perspectives of the outsider and theinsider, the Murdock/Firth exchange would seem to provide a good stand-point from which to view British social anthropology as an historical phe-nomenon. But it also highlights certain methodological issues in intellectualhistory-which, like anthropology, faces problems of abstraction and varia-tion. This is the case even when an intellectual phenomenon bears a label(e.g., "Freudian" or "Durkbeimian") that protagonists, critics, and historiansare all inclined to employ unquestioningly; it is much more so when a unify-ing label or concept raises hotly debated epistemological issues (as in the caseof "paradigm"), or lends itself to a derogatory interpretation (as in the caseof "school"). In the present instance, there are so many qualifications, notonly in Firth's historicizing defense of British social anthropology, but evenin Murdock's typologizing critique, that the hisrorian is hard put to specifyjust when and in which actors the phenomenon under attack was actuallyrealized. Murdock in fact exempted almost every major British social anthro-pologist from some aspect of his criticism, and various passages suggest thathe, too, saw the "school" as a rather recently emergent historical phenome-non. Postulating a declension from Firth to Fortes to Evans-Pritchard (whoserecent rehistoricization he seemed unaware 00, Murdock in fact allowed thatRichards, Schapera, Forde, Nadel, and Firth all showed "definite intimations"of the "possible emergence" of "a group of anthropologists in the strict sense."He also recognized a considerable distinction between Malinowski-who hadstill studied culture and who "continued to expand and revise his theoriesto the last year of his life"-and Radcliffe-Brawn-who "seems never ro have

",

I

134 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

corrected a mistake nor to have modified his theoretical position in any sig-nificant respect since its earliest formulation decades ago" 0951:466, 472). Mur-dock's "school" thus threatens to collapse into a single individual.

From this perspective, then, the 1951 exchange suggests that historical in-quiry concerning modern British social amhrofXllogy might well start withthe career of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. There, if anywhere, we might expect tofind a proximate source for the distinctive typological features that Murdockcharacterized so negatively. But taking a clue from Firth's historidzing response,and from a concern all would accept as characteristic of British social anthro-pology, we may perhaps place the problem in a slightly larger framework-onethat may also help in approaching issues of variation and abstraction else.where in intellectual history.

Insofar as intellectual movements may be compared to "unilineal descentgroups," one would expect their fission or segmentation to produce groupingswith a distinctly relative or situational character-groupings that would beboth construed and evaluated differently by insiders and outsiders, depend-ing on the context in which group definition was at issue (Beattie 1964:99-101; Fortes 1953). Although Murdock was not a member of the traditionallydominant lineage in American anthropology, in confroming the tribe fromacross the sea, he tended to view it from a traditionally Boasian standpoint,and to minimize its internal differentiation. Although Firth was not a rnem-ber ~f :he currently dominant lineage in British anthropology, and thereforesaw It 10 much more differentiated fashion, he nevertheless felt it necessaryto defend his tribe against attack from without.

The modern study of segmentary lineages emerged from the work ofRadchffe-Brown, and it seems appropriate that his own career followed adefinite pattern of oppositional self-definition. As any dominant clan leadermight, he himself tended retrospectively to construe such episodes so as toem~ha~ize the purity of his descent from earlier ancestral figures. These self.validating ancestral claims are not without basis· Radcliffe-Brown did indeed,d~rive. much of his thinking from Emile Durkh~im. However, conte:nporaryhlstoncal evidence suggests th hi h .. hrooolozi I· .

~L~ L at ISc aractensuc ant ropa ogrca viewpointwas first develo ......d in oppo . . h f .. W H R

t-'~ smcn to t at 0 a more Immediate mentor, . . .Rivers, during the years between 1910 and 1914; and that its final elaborationwas only accomplished in the 1930s, in opposition first to the dominant orien-tation within American hid . f . Iant ropo ogy, an then to the views 0 Bronis awMalinowski, his competitor for lineage leadership within the British anthro-pological tribe. While it will not be possible here to treat Radcliffe-Brown'scareer in an exhaustively h! . If hi . . f h ..rsronca as ron, I close exammanon a t ese crtn-

cal oppositional episodes may cast light on the historical roots of the view-point at issue in the 1951 exchange.

Radcliffe-Brown and the Sequence of Paradigmsin Anthropology

Rather early in his career, fifteen years before he augmented his name to dis-tinguish himself from [he "many Browns in [he world" (ACHP: RB/ACH11112/21), A. R. Radcliffe·Brown became possessed of a set of ideas which,as applied to the particular national disciplinary tradition in which he worked,were significantly innovative. Their elaboration, systematization, and refine-ment became the preoccupation of his somewhat nomadic professional career.Shedding books and papers as he moved from place to place around the in-tellectual periphery, he deliberately carried little intellectual baggage. Althoughhe acknowledged certain large intellectual debts that placed him in legitimat-ing relation to major traditions in social theory, he was reluctant to see hisown viewpoint as an historical phenomenon. Much given to retrospectivesystematization, he later bridled at Robert Lowie's suggestion that he had"shifted his position" on significant theoretical issues (Stocking 1976b), and

:

are several important obituary essays and appreciations (e.g., Eggan 1956; Elkin i956; Firth 1956;rortes 1956a; Fones, 00. 1949; Stanuer 1956, 1968) as well as chapters based on published sOurCeSin various histories of anthropology, either general or specifically British (e.g" Kuper 1973; Harris1968; Hatch 1973). He is discussed in works of an historical-theoretical character (Fortes 19690:Jarvie 1964; Leach 1961, 1976), and there is by now a body of what might be called historica]-critical writing largely devoted to the question of the originalitv Or derivative character of hiswork on Australian social organuanon (e.g., Needhom 1974; White 1981), The only extendedhistorical treatment, a chapter in Ian Langham's history of the Rivers school {l981:Z44-300),shares the strengths and weakne'Se5 of that volume, which is indeed characrerisncallv River,ianin it. combination of systematic empirical research and que.tionable interpretation. Althoughbased On extensive archival research. and a commendable conCern with the rechnical derails ofkinShip analysis, it is marred by the overinflation of Rivets' theoretical influence on Radcliffe-Brown, and rather uncritically accepts the recent attacks On him. A satisfactory historical under·standing of Radcliffe·Brown's contribution to the development of British Social Aruhropologvwill have somehow to transcend not only the myth~his!Ory generated by some of his followers,but also the debunking efforts of his critics. While rc is of course necessary to dispose of ,ertainexaggerated claims of originality, the attempt to reduce Radcliffe·Brown to an emin·II' derivotivefigure does not help us understand the great impact he had on anthropology on both sides ofthe Atlantic in thl' 19305, 1940s, and 19505. I! should be, but probablv is not, needless to assertthat to focus on episodes in the Career of a single anthropologist is not to commi[ one>elf to

a "great man" theory of the history of anthropology, nor to deny the importance of many otherfactors, including the funding and the colonial context of anthropological inquiry. I have ap-preached the funding question in an unpublished manuscript drawn upon herein (Stocking197&): the latter merits more systematically histori,al treatment than that initialcd in Asad([973).

I. Althoughsomeg=ipyo Ih· . I '-,.B h . . ra IStory ctrcu arcs among aothropologises, rhe career ofRa()l,; rrre-

rown as ehclted so far relativel li I· h ThY Itt I' In t e way of serious intellectual historiography. erej

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136 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR,

perhaps tended to push back the dates by which he formulated his character-istic positions. But however cavalierly he may have treated the ideas or theempirical data of those he regarded as amateurs, and however much his olvm-pian posture may have alienated some of those with whom he came in con-tact, his devotion to the refinement and propagation of his viewpoint wasa critical factor in a major intellectual reorientation in British anthropology.

To place that reorientation in the broadest perspective, it will help to keepin mind that anthropological speculation prior to 1900 had always been car-ried on in an essentially diachronic framework, in the British as in all otherEuropean anthropological traditions. In somewhat simplified schematic terms,the history of anthropology from its earliest origins may be viewed as the al-ternate dominance of two paradigms: on the one hand, a progressive develop-mental paradigm, deriving ultimately from Greek speculation on the originof human civilization, which was expressed in sixteenrh-cenrurv humanist,eighteenth-century progressivist, and nineteenth-century evolutionist specu-lations on the same topic; 00 the other, a migrational or diffusionary para-digm, deriving ultimately from biblical assumptions about the genealogy ofnations, which was expressed in medieval and again in seventeenth-centuryspeculation, and was reasserted in the early nineteenth century as the "ethno-logical" tradition (Stocking 1973, 1978a, 1981a, 1983b). While it is impossiblehere to offer.a detailed comparison, it is important to emphasize that althoughthe assumptions of their inquiry differed in many respects, both paradigmsfocussed on processes of change in time, which given the nature of the evi-dence they dealt with, could only be approached by indirect means. Bothparadigms compared forms coexisting in the present in order to reconstructthe past, .whe.ther in terms of hypothetical developmental sequences or pre-sumed hlstoncal connections.

, In ~hisContext, Radcliffe-Brown's work may be seen as an important con-tnbuting factor to the first major break in the alternation of diachronic~ara~igms, and the reorientation of an important current of anthropologicalmq~lry ~~ward the investigation of synchronic sociological problems. Thisdehlstoncl.zation_which was never complete (cf. Lewis 1984), and arguablywas o:ver Intended to be, which would surely be derogated by many anrhro-pclogisre today, and seems likely now to be reversed~is by no means to beatttlbute~ solely.to the influence of Radcliffe-Brown. In a somewhat differentway, Malmowskl also contributed to it; and the fact that a similar changeoccurred in American anrh Ih ropo ogy suggests that more general influences may

ave been at work (cf Stocking 1976a). Nevertheless it is in this contextthat Radcliffe-Brown's anthropol . I k' I' I. . oglca career ta es on its maxima hisroricasigriiticance.e

I. These two paragraphs take for, ." .rant"" an Orrentation to the general history of anthropol-

ogy that cannot be fully elaborated here and has L - ~ d , d f' ,. ,' ""e., eveope SO ar arge y In my e<:tUre5,

RADCLIFFE-BROWN ANO BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

,

At the time Radcliffe-Brown came upon the scene, the evolutionary em-bodiment of the developmental paradigm was entering a state of crisis. Al-though this crisis has yet to be studied systematically, it is abundantly evi-dent in contemporary historical materials. E. B. Tyler's long-awaited magnumopus on the evolution of religion, already partially in galleys, lay gatheringdust in his files, in part at least because of intellectual developments that hadcalled into question some basic Tylorian assumptions (Stocking 1981b). An-drew Lang had just fallen from evolutionary orthodoxy to embrace a degen-erationfsr hypothesis of primitive monotheism (1901).R. R. Marett had JUSt

postulated the existence of preanimistic religious phenomena (1900).More gen-erally, there was a growing discomfort with the way in which evolutionarycategories articulated with what Marett now preferred to call "rnagico-religious"phenomena (Stocking 1983a:91).Anthropological debate swirled particularlyaround the problem of rorernism, with special reference to the striking newethnographic data Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen had published on theAruma of Central Australia (1899). Mclennan's original socioreligious con-ception, in which matrilineal exogamous clans were held together by respectfor a single animal emblem (1869), did not fit too easily with the complexitiesof the section systems regulating Australian Aboriginal marriage. Indeed, by1906 one observer felt the new Australian data threatened to "overthrow allrecognized principles ... [of] the totemic regulation of marriage" (Thomas190637).

At the center of the turmoil stood James G. Frazer. Despite tension thathad arisen with his intellectual master Tylor by the time of its second edition,The Golden Bough (1900) is a fine instance of the almost parodic reduction

seminars, and certain unpublished manuscripts (though d. Stocking 1973 and 1978a). Al-though I use "paradigm" in a way that departs significantly from Kuhn's original ,usage (d.Kuhn 1962, 1974), I nevertheless find it a nicely resonant Term for recurrent alTernunve frame-works of anthropclogtcal speculation that have some of the characteristics Kuhn annburcs to"paradigms." In addition to the developmental and the diffusionary paradigms, one,c~n dIS-tinguish a third major trnditional anthropological orientation: [he polygenist, which IS In factessentially atemporal, since it assumed the existence of distinct types or races of mankind un-changed since their creation. However, its denial of human unity made it fundamentally he{~ro-dox to the European anthropological tradition, and it surfaced as a legitimate anthropologicalalternative only in t:he mid-nineteenth century, when it was a factor in the crisis of t:he eth-

, . f'" . '" ,.. I viewine Radcliffe-Brownno cgical paradigm and the emergence 0 c aSSlca evo UtlOnism. n • ~ ~as pan of an even mo", fundamental paradigm discontinuity, I do not wish to imply that asynchronic sociological orientation was withom precedent-which he himself appropriatelyfound in Monresquleu (R-B 1958;147). Bur within the empirical sphere that his{~rically hasdistlnguished "anthropology" as a realm of inquiry and speculenon-ahe comparative study of1l0n·European peoples-crho Momesquicuan tradition previously manifested itself alway~ m a d,a-h . disti . h ,. ctoloekal para-cronic guise. so that it does not seem appropTlate to rsnbguis a sync rromc so ~

digm in {he history of anthropology prior ro the twentieth century (d. Stocking 1978a and198Ib).

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138 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.

of the basic assumptions of an intellectual viewpoint that may occur in thework of epigones arriving on the scene after the impulse of originally genera-tive problems has been spent. Its opening pages display all the fundamentalassumptions of social evolutionary thought: the uniformity of nature, thepsychic unity of mankind, the comparative method, regular stages of devel-opment, and the doctrine of survivals (cf. Carneiro 1973). But what is moststriking in Frazer are those assumptions that especially characterize what Evans-Pritchard (1933) later called the "English Intellectualist School": the classicalprinciples of associationist psychology (similarity and contiguity) embodiedin the two forms of sympathetic magic, and the overriding preoccupation withthe problem of the motives behind bizarre customs-notably of course thosethat "gave birth to the priesthood of Nerm" (1900:1,4). The same preoccupa-tion motivated the three "theories" of torerrusm Frazer incorporated into hisencyclopedic compilation of data on 10temism and Emgamy of 1910, by whichtime the presumed unity of the diagnostic features that Mclennan had linkedtogether back in 1869 was in radical danger of unravelling. Whatever maybe the evaluation of his status by more recent anthropologists (d.Jarvie 1966,and Leach 1966), there is no doubt that in rhe first decade of the century,Frazer was the figure who more than any other exemplified the evolutionaryparadigm, now after four decades in a state of increasing disarray.

Rivers' Conversion from Evolution to Ethnology

Although Frazer was ensconced in his evolutionary armchair in Trinity Col-lege when. Radcliffe-Brown came up from Birmingham in 1902, Brown's an.thr,opologlCaltraining came largely from W H. R. Rivers; he was in fact Riv-ers first (and best known) student in that field. Because he later took whatpr~~ed to be the "wrong" road Out of the early twentieth-century paradigmcrisis It has been d,·ffi,ul, ,. d . R· , hi

, 0 gam an a equate understanding of Ivers IS'torical influence- evert the reo II - a . f' '- .. recent ellort to resurrect It SUllersa bit rom com-pensatory overestimation (Langham 1981;Slobodin 1978). Bur if the leaderso~the next generation reacted sharply against the rather extreme conjecturalhistory of Rivers' [arer y .. hid d'- ears, It IS noner e ess the case that for two eca eshe was the most influential figure in British anthropology. His electric intel-lect and striking pre h d . d. , sence a great Impact on all with whom he worked, anhIS Ideas, even when later rejected, helped define the framework of anthro-pological debate.

Trained originally In m dici R· I. e IClne, Ivers moved to neurology and psycho ogy111 the early 1890s be' h fi Le . ., e Omlng t erst crurer In Physiological and Experi-m~ntal Psychology at Cambridge in 1897.When Haddon organized the Cam-bndge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, he chose Rivers to carry

RADCLiFFE-BR.OWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHR.OPOLOGY

Out the first systematic attempt to apply the "new" experimental psychologyto a "primitive" population. To a psychologist familiar with the work of Fran-cis Galton on the inheritance of mental ability in family lines, it seemed onlynatural to collect genealogies to "discover whether or not those who were closelyrelated resembled one another in their reactions to the various psychologicaland physiological tests" (Rivers 1908:65). Rivers quickly perceived that the"genealogical method" he used in the Torres Strait had sociological potentialas well (1900:75); it in fact articulated admirably with the approach to thestudy of kinship elaborated thirty years previously by the American evolution-ary anthropologist LewisHenry Morgan in 5)'stems of ConsangHinity and Affinit),(1870). Although Rivers continued to carry out important psychological re-searches, he devoted much of his energy in the decade after his return fromTorres Strait to further ethnographic fieldwork, and to the explication, de-fense, and revision of Morgan's theories-or, as Rivers put it, to "sifting outthe chaff from the wheat of his argument" (l914a:95; cf. 1907).

Although some of Morgan's assumptions had been sharply criticized bythe leading British evolutionary theorist of primitive social institutions (Me-Lerman 1876), Morgan's disciple Lorimer Fison earlv on introduced theminto the Australian ethnographic tradition (Fison & Howitt 1880). Subse-quently taking the deceased Morgan's place as Fison's armchair mentor-bv-correspondence, Tvlor was able to suggest an integration of Mclennan's con-ception of exogamy with Morgan's classificatory system (Tvlor 1888:265). Viathis Australian connection Morganian assumption was also very much a partof Frazer's speculation. If to speak of Rivers' "rediscovery" of Morgan is thusto overstate the novelty of the matter, it is nonetheless true that Rivers' "in-sistence on Morgan's principle that kinship terminologies and customs de-pend on social causes, have social functions, [and] reflect socially ordainedrights and duties" marked a stage in the development of British social anthro-pology (Fortes 1969a: 17,26). As Rivers himself saw it in 1914, the specialsignificance of "the body of facts which Morgan was the first to collect andstudy" lay in the fact that it provided the basis for a "rigorously deterministic"kience of sociology. "We have here a case in which the principle of determin-ism applies with a rigour and definiteness equal to that of any of the exactsciences, since according to my scheme not only has the general characterof systems of relationship been strictly determined by social conditions, butevery detail of these systems has also been so determined" (Rivers 1914a:95).Although subsequent exponents (and in some of his moods, Rivers) were notalways so naively positivistic, the point of view and tone are authenticallythose of the later social anthropological tradition: social anthropology wasto be the natural science of society, not simply on the basis of a generalizedreductionisr analogy, but because certain characteristic social phenomena wereasserted to be analveable by a rigorously scientific method.

I

139

140 GEORGE W SroCKING, JR. RADCLlFFE·BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Bur if Rivers helped co define the tradition, he himself remained on theother side of a major theoretical divide, insofar as his analysis of social or.ganization was still carried on within a diachronic interpretive framework.In this respect he accepted without question the traditional assumptions ofth~ ~iscipline to which he came rather late in life. Although his scientificrranung made him quite sensitive to certain issues of method, he seems tohave started out in anthropology by rather self-consciously relating himselfto. the ev~lutionary viewpoint which, despite evident signs of paradigm strain,still dommated British anthropological theory. One gets a sense of this in hisfirst full-length ethnographic monograph: The Todas (1906), based on field-wor.k that he did in 1902. Like some of his later work, The Todas is a para-doxical amalgam of methodological self-consciousness and uninhibited explana-tory imagination-which manifested itself in the Context of difficulties Rivershad presenting his somewhat recalcitrant ethnographic data within an evolu-tionary framework (cf. Mandelbaum 1980; Rooksby 1971; Stocking 1983:89).

To have selected the Todas for ethnographic study in the first place wasof course to engage evolutionary theory at a critical point since their poly-andry illustrated a problem'c·," t . M' -, 'f.'" '- sage m Ci.Xnnanssequence a marriage rorms(McI...e~nan1865:73).That Rivers' initial overall explanatory strategy was, how-ever still evolurionarv . . I .,

, g ISvarious Ymaturest. He often referred to aspects ofToda Culture as representin ."" fl.. . g a certain stage 0 evo utlon-frequently, a rran-~1tlonalone: thus they had reached "a stage of mental development in whichIt seems that they are no I'd . h honger sansne Wit t e nomenclature of a purelyclaSSificatorysystem and have be n t k di . . hei . I' ave oegu 0 rna e IstmCtlons In r err termmo _og~ for near and distant relatives" (1906:493 d. 541). Beyond this, there isa kind of general checking f . f Tod I. a caregonex 0 roca cu rure against those of evo-lutionary theory-often with negative results. Thus the Toda dara offered "lit-tle to SUPPOTtthe idea that h d _. ~t e go s are perSOnificatiOns of forces of natureand "no definite'd d h .. eVI ence towar s t e solution of the vexed question of therelation between polyandry' d J f ··d"· h IL an rn anncr e -ISSues t at derived respective yrrorn the work of Tyler a d M ,- I hb n ci.Xnnan, at ough Rivers mentioned neithery na~e (447, 520). Finally, there is Rivers' fundamental idea of what consti-

tuted explanation" in anth I foil .di . h ropo ogy. oWlOgthe English intellectualist tra-mon, e saw explanation' f ... m terms 0 ongm and rnctive c-of discovering orreconstructmg what ut"!'t .. d h 11 anan purpose people have (or once had) in rheir

mm s w en they perform . Ih a paTtlcu ar customary act. Thus Rivers argued

t at some features of Toda h·ldb· h .- " f . C I Itt ceremOnies "had their origin in the mo-

tive ? .promotlng lactation by imitating the flow of milk (329).It IS In this Context as II h .

h d' d h' ,We as t e conjunction of ill-starred occurrencest at TIe ~p Is.sources of information toward the end of his fieldwork, thatone must ViewRIvers' often f kl kAl h h· ran yac nowledged difficulties of explanation.

t aug It ran counter to th .e assumptions underlying the notion of sur-

vival, the most direct way for the field ethnographer to explain a cultural prac-tice in terms of motive was to ask people why they did it. But in most cases,"the Todas were quite unable to give explanations of their customs, the an-swer to nearly every inquiry being that the custom in question was ordainedby the goddess Teikirzi" (1906:14);and Rivers had to make his own inferencesabout Toda motives. In some cases he simply confessed his inability "to satisfymyself as to what people really had in their minds" (356); in others we cansee him retreating toward the doctrine of survivals: "Possibly the Todas mayhave some clear ideas about the connexton between their bells, gods and dairies,but I could not discover them, and am inclined to believe that the peopleare now very hazy about the exact place of the bell and the god in their the-ology" (427). At a more general level, however, there was a recurring problemof evolutionary fir. or the failure of evolutionary expectation: the combina-tion, for instance, of strict regulation of marriage choice with what to Riversseemed almost total sexual promiscuity (529-32, 549), or the "highly devel-oped" idea of a god and the complete indifference to the desecration of thehilltop cairns associated with Toda gods (453-55). In the end, Rivers was forcedto conclude that Toda customs, many of which had "no exact parallels in otherplaces," ran counter to "perhaps the most definite result which modern re-search in anthropology has brought out": "the extraordinary similarity ofCUstoms"among "widely separated races"-which was of course a basic as-sumption underlying the notion of parallel evolutionary development (4).

It is therefore not surprising that Rivers' specifically generalizing chaptersdisappoint or otherwise abuse our expectations. After seventeen chapters de-scribing the ceremonies of the Todas, his chapter on Toda religion in generalis conceived in residual rather than integrative terms (1906:442)-a fact espe-cially illuminating in contrast to Radcliffe-Brawn's Andaman Islanders (1922),where the two explanatory chapters take up half the book. The structuralequivalent in The Todas is a concluding chapter on their "origin and history."Here, after seven hundred pages in an evolutionary key,Rivers suddenly strucka "highly conjectural" diffusionarv chord, using his recalcitrant data on Todareligion to suggest that they had come to the Nilghiri hills a thousand yearsbefore from the Malabar region, where they had been influenced by Chris-tian and Jewish settlements (693-715). Given the failure of evolutionary as-sumption to explain so much of the Tocla data, Rivers turned instead to an-other approach to the problem of origins: the diffusionary historical approachcharacteristic of the alternative diachronic paradigm, which in its "ethnologi-cal" incarnation had not disappeared entirely from British anthropology dur-ing the era of evolutionary dominance, and was still reflected in many of theinterests of Rivers' colleague Haddon (Urry 1982).

Although Rivers' difficulties with his Toda data document some of thestresses a more systematic ethnography helped create in the evolutionary para-

141

142 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 143

digm around 1900 (cf Stocking 1983a), and in fact foreshadow his later theo-retical development, it was not until the 1911 meeting of the British Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science that he announced his "conversion" toan "Ethnological Analysis of Culture." Rather than interpret cultural phe-nomena in ~erms of "independent processes of evolution based on psychologi-cal tendencies common to mankind," Rivers now joined. the German ethnolo-gists Graebner and Schmidt in explaining them in terms of "the mixture ofcultures. and peoples" (l91U25). Elaborating his argument in the context ofdl~cu.ltles he had with Melanesian data he had collected in 1908, Rivers ap-plied rr to Australian Aboriginal culture, which since the work of Spencerand Gillen had, according to Andrew Lang become lost "in a wilderness ofdifficulties" (1907'209) 1,="1 d bl '- I - h -' "b-- Y ue to pro ems In re atmg r e section systemsand the totemic dans-ethnographic manifestations, respectively, of Morgan'sand Mclennan's evolutionary viewpoints. While for evolutionists Australiaprovided a "homogeneous example of primitive human society" Rivers wastroubled by the "COl" " t "h f £ " •XISence t ere 0 two rorrns of SOCIalorganization. Solong as he had been "ob es d" bv " d I _ _ _s sse y a cru I" eva unonary point of view" rhisfact "seemed an absolut .. m t " hi Vi _ ', ... ys ery to tm. lewmg them now as the resultof a ml~ture of two peoples similar to that which he had found in Melanesia,evervdung was clarified' on" h d d" h d I - -, . -- a possesse t I" ua orgamsation and matn-hneal descenr" the oth " . d _ _

. . ' et- was organtze In torerruc dans possessing eitherpatnlmeal descent 0 I __f ' r at any rate c ear recogmtlon of the relation betweenather and child" Generali' hi R" . ".' zmg ISargument Ivers insisted that evolution-

ary speculations can have n f b - I' h. 0 rm aS1Sun ess t ere has been a preceding

analYSISof the cultures and '"I- - ". , C1VIIzatlons now spread over the earth's surface.OtherWIse It was "impo -bl h h _b ' SS1 I" to say w et er an Institution or belief possessedYfa Ple~ple who seem simple and primitive may nor really be the product

o a re atlvely advanced cultu £ - b, re rOrm1ng utone element of a complexity which

at fi~st sl~ht seems simple and homogeneous" (1911:130-32).Rivers conversion to eth I - I I - -

f no oglca ana YSISImplied neither the abandon-mem 0 the Morganian fa . II . cus on SOCia structure nor the toral rejection ofevo utlonary assumptio P , I b

II - ns. reClse y ecause social structure was so "nmda-menta YImpOrtant" and' h"

bl d· reSIstant to c ange except as the result of the inri-mate en mg of peapl ", fu 'h·~ "b

b h . es, It rms t;:U y far the firmest foundation" on whichto ase et nologlCal an I ' If I- - I a YSIS. one cou d determine the sequence of changesIn SOcIa structure one ld h-[ th ] d a I' cou use t IS to establish "the order in time of theo er Illerenc I" emencs inc h' h" .

com lex" (1911-134 0 W Ie l~ ISPOSSibleto analyse a given [culture]h- ~ " 138), Although RIvers' diffusionary hypotheses required

1m m many cases to assume th d 'Co " d d" I I" egeneratlDn of Culture in order to accountI' r a vance cu tural 1"1 .t - I I - f ements m peoples of otherwise "low" culture, his his-Otlca ana YSIS0 social

structure was at least as dependent on the doctrine

of survivals as evolutionism had been. Without it, he could not use presentkinship terminology to reason back to prior marriage practices. Thus to bur-tress his new theoretical possession, he felt it necessary to argue, successively,bOlh "The Disappearance of Useful Arts" (l912a) and "the persistence of theuseless" (1913:293),

Viewed in terms of his relation to subsequent social anthropology ratherthan to evolutionism, there are several further aspects of Rivers' conversionthat merit comment, Although Rivers (like many evolutionists) had an in-cipient notion of "function," it was to be, in the language of Macbeth, "smoth-ered in surmise"; and if he helped transmit the Morganian conc.eption ofsystem, his later diffusion ism in fact tended to fragment cultures Into their"component elements," which were related to each other not in synchronicsystemic terms, but rather in stratified diachronic terms as the laye:ed resi-dues of different episodes of culture contact (1914b:lI, 2), Beyond this, thereis the problem of Rivers' attitude to "psychology." His stated position, ~v~nafter his "conversion" to ethnology, was to insist on the continuing validityof a psychological analysis of "the modes of thought of different peoples" asa parallel enterprise 0911:132), and within a few years he in fact moved towardan integration of psychology and ethnology (1917), under the influence of an-other of his intellectual enthusiasms-psychoanalysis, which he encounteredwhile treating shell-shocked soldiers during the Great War, Bur for a periodafter his "conversion" in the context also of his failure to explain Toda culture- h - - 'h h id th psychological analysisIn psyc OIOglStlCterms, I" seems to ave put asi I" I" ,

of culture because his current psychological viewpoint seemed Inadequateto the task. As we shall see, all of these issues were implicated in his relation-ship to Radcliffe-Brown.

I

"Anarchy' Brown and the Andaman Islands

B - R- d raduate enrolled in therown first came in contact With Ivers as an un erg .' IMoral Science Tripes, which at that time consisted of philosophy, polmcaeconomy, and psychology (Stocking 1977). He later recalled that as a resultf h- - - h h B" h nt-garde mtellecrual Have-o ISyouthful acquamtance Wit t I" tltlS ava .'

lock Ellis and (apparently through Ellis) the exiled Russian anarch,lst, ~tlnceC b -d I d "sociologist" IntentPeter Kroporkin he had come up to am tI ge a rea ya ,

-' - - f I "(BMPL-R-B/BM 12l3i/29;on devonng his life to "the SCIentificstudy a cu ture 'R-B/Kroeber as cited in Kelly 1983; cE. Perry 1975). After taking his degrc

d,

-' f k - h h Iy established BoarIn 1905 he stayed on for a year 0 wor Wit t e newof Anthropological Studies (Gathereole n.d.), reading physical anrhropologdy

- - -d h I vith Haddon, anWIth Duckworth, archeology WIth RI geway, et no ogy \

144GEORGE W STOCKING, JR.

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 145kinship with Rivers-with whom he had already studied psychology. Rerro-specrivelv, he insisted that "from the outset" he and Rivers disagreed "on thesubject of method" (R-B 1941:50), and recalled having undertaken in 1905 a"long essay on the concept of function in science" as part of a general workon sciemific method (Stocking 1976b). Surviving evidence from the period,however, suggests that his disagreements with his mentor emerged more gradu-ally, and did not fully crystallize until 1913.

Certainly Brown's Andaman fieldwork was undertaken within a frameworkof diachronic assumption. Although at one point he later said that he hadgone out to study a "primitive people who had no toremism" (R-B 1923:22),contemporary evidence and subsequent retrospection both confirm that hewas interested in reconstructing the "primitive culture" of the Negriro race,which was presumed to have been the lowest of four population strata in South-east Asia (R-B 1932:407; cf. ACHP: Temple/ACH 3/16/06). Modelled on thatof the Torres Straits expedition, his fieldwork encompassed every aspect ofanthropological research, including material culture, physical anthropology,and psychological testing (Stocking 1983a:83). Insofar as social enrhropologi-cal data were concerned, his work seems not to have been so successful ashe and Rivers may have hoped. He had difficulty collecting genealogies, ad-mitting in prim that "this branch of my investigation was a failure" (I93Z:72).Even so, his attempt at what might be called "social paleontology" was-byretrospective systematization in another theoretical context-to provide theunderlying empirical basis for the "social physiology"'ater associated with hisname (c(. Kochar 2968).

In 1908, however, that development still lay in the future. Judging by theone long surviving published fragment (which may even be the missing Trin-ity Fellowship thesis!) the first version of Brown's Andaman ethnography wasinfluenced more by Haddon than by Rivers, and showed nor a trace of Durk-heim (despite his later recollection that he had been introduced to Durkheim'swork by Ellis in 1899 [Kelly 1983]). Indeed it seems to have been an almostBoasian attempt at historical reconstruction on the basis of a comparative~nalysis of CUlture elements (R-B 193Z:407_94). Similarly, articles he publishedIn 1909 and 1910 reflect little of his mature theoretical viewpoint-though indefending himself against the criticisms of the German diffusionist Schmidthe did .offer certain strictures on historical arguments based on the doctrineof surVivals (R-B 191Oa:36),.One suspects that it was during the same academicyear, when he lectured on Australian ethnology and the Kwakiud potlatchat th~ London School of Economics, that he had his first systematic encoun-ter With the Durkheimian literature. ...

A record of that enCOUnter survives in notes of the series of lectures hegave on "Comparative Sociology" at Cambridge early in 1910 (cf. pp. Il3~Z8,

h· luroej.B own later said that he had "all his life accepted the hypothesist ISvo umer. r ~ <H k' h hesiof social evolution as formulated by Spencer as a useful war 109 ypot ests. h d f . "(R B 1958,189) Whether derived from Spencer (whommt estu yo soclcty - .. . fhe would have read in large doses for the Moral Science Ti-ipos) or romKro otkin {whose Mutual Aid is, among other things, a ~elange of SOCial

P . . [0 1975[1 evolutionism provided the unclerlv-evolutlonarv assumptions I"erry, . . h _ing framework of the lectures. And though he began by rejecrmg t

fe prm-

, . . , . rerms a a senesciple of unilinearity, he in fact tended to treat msutunons In h h. I. di I add however t at IS eva u-of progressive stages, One must rmme late y , . '. II ir as the

h ·1 0 kheimian Characteristica y, 1 wtionary orientation was eavr y ur . ..,. h t he" .. d I or and function" of particular SOCIal institutions t aongm, eve opmc , . I nts of thediscussed. And indeed, one can pretty well relate parncu at segrne

lecture series to particular Durkheimian sources.. f h d I em of. f h . r of view o t e eveopmWhat is most interesting, rom t e porn h close

I d! . s hich toget er occupy '-Brown's thought are the two conc u 109 topics, W dE"' f1' "f mism an xogamyto half of the notes. They consist of re ecnons on ore hil the series was

(which may well have been provoked by the appearance, W ue f the evolu-, dium) f II d by a treatment 0 , '-in progress, of Frazer 5 cornpen iumj, 0 owe S. h d Hertz as well

' ". hi h B d ew on Robertson mit an ,non of religion, 10 w IC town r . of his Anda-h h d he most extensive useas on Durkheim. It is here t at e rna e t f I. ing Durkheim

·f dd I . he course 0 exp icau ,man data. It is almost as 1 su en y, In t. If h had found no clas-. I k significance. ethe Andaman matena too on a new . b h were the type

h A d It was ecause t eysificarory system among ten amanese, d Draw-. . d d he only one yet encountere .caseofthepreexogamoussoclety-m ee ,t. fTheD ... nn/Labor-Brown

kh . h D khelm 0 Itll5l0ing heavily on early Our' elm-t e ur re of 0 ulation increase suchoffered a hypothesis as to how under the pressu . hP Ph .ng out of the ani-

. . . db mous Wit as ana society might dIVide an ecome exoga ,

mal world in the process (cf, R-B 1923:Z0-Z~). f I" -the British "an-I f h' retatlon 0 re 19lonContrasting two schoo sot e mterp I Iy :nclined toward

h" . I 'ca\"-Brown c ear ,thropological" and the Frenc soCia Ogl ( . I to illustrate "Theh' A d data lor matenilthe latter as he called on IS n aman .. .. Hit ,uggested that the

d F . (ReligIon, e a erOrigin Development, an unction 0 . _ . 1910 "as an' I{ ders had been wntten Inlast two chapters of The Andaman san. . of rhe institutions

h d' the mterpretatlonattempt to develop a new met 0 10 f hit , .. material in fact" (R 1922· 1 d some ate ec u "-of a primitive people -B :IX, an B' s clear that he had

. (the book ut It seemroughly parallels certain portions a b' • in I"ter theoreticalI . 'f I ecause cer,3, "nor yet fully developed that ana ySIS,I on y f hates More impor-

" . I I") absent romt en .catch-phrases (such as SOCIa va ue are . I d lopmenr Brown. f h' Il theoretlca eve ,tant, from the point of view 0 lS overa _ h . lutionary viewpoint. I h·ft f a dlac romc evohad not yet made the crUCla s I rom'L t"O have taken place. Th· .. I hill seems no ,to that of synchronic analYSIS. IScrltlca s

146GEORGE W STocKING, JR. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

until several years later, in the context of debate with Rivers over the inter-pretation of data Brown collected during his second fieldwork expedition toWestern Australia.

The first letter affirmed a not-vet-disrupted discipleship: Brown was pleasedthat a manuscript on childbirth customs fitted with Rivers' Melanesian work;he asked for a copy of Rivers' British Association address, which he had missedwhile in Australia. Discussing his own plans for further Australian research,he suggested that he now had "a good working hypothesis of the ori.gin ?fthe Australian social organisation, and indeed of the origin of rorermsrn In

general." The key was the dual division, and he was "m~r~ wedde~ tha~ ~ver':to his theory that it was "essentially a mode of orgarusmg the oppostuonsthat arise in savage societies in connection with marriage, initiation: et7:" Forthe present, however, he proposed to publish only factual data, leaving ques-tions of origin" until after further field research, Although he,expected theintermediate forms of the Lake Eyre tribes to provide the ultimate key, hehoped first to go to north Queensland to study "the local and relationshiporganisations in their relationship to the totemic clans" among a tribe whose"maternal descent of the totem" would contrast to the male descent he foundin Western Australia, ,

Responding subsequently to Rivers' "conversion" address, Brown at thispoint defined their differences in minimal terms. "Fully" accepnng the pr~po,~

. . did ociological explanation,sition that "analvsis of a rmxe cu rure must prece e s, dRi , argument tohe simply insisted that Australian culture was unrruxec. Ivers

· h f iage classes and the sys-the contrary depended on treatlng t e system 0 marn , '· . . (I Frazer) and assoclanng eachtern of totem clans as separate mstirunons a a ,

B " t d that both classes and clanswith a different population stratum. rown InSlSe· h he relati hi tern" and that the formwere "inseparably bound up Wit t ere atlons Ip sys, , '

flecri f ir ricular SOCIalorgaOlza-totem ism took in any group was a re ectlon 0 I spar , ' ,rion. "Social structure" was "fundamental," and "the specia1is~tlon"of r

le1

llglou

h,

f h . I' , of social functions. At -ougfunctions [was] the result 0 r e specta tsanon ,_ dd h basi tt s of conceptualizatlon anfurther correspondence reveale r at asrc rna er "

I d d b ' r'ng his "full agreementdefinition were at issue, Brown cone u e y reltera Iwith "the main point" of Rivers' address, d. d".

ltd the twO Isagree qUIteRivers' unpreserved answer apparent y sugges e I d h. .B fu ther exp kate ISvIewfundamentally about Australia." In response, rown r h .

f h I· h ystem" on t at connoent:of the "two essential features ate re anons lp 5 'I" h d" , f nearer and more distant re a·t e existence of clans due to the lsnncnon a I b' "tives of the same kind" and "the classification of the world of natura °h J'd~t~

, . d' ' , "according to t e IVl-of religious or mythic significance mto twO IVISIOns

The Problem of Totemism in Australia

Brown's original proposal for a field trip to Western Australia was simply fora general survey, with subsequent concentration on whatever tribe prom-ised "the most valuable results" (ACHP: R-B/Cambridge Board of Anthro-pology 11/4/09). By the time he arrived in Perth in September 19lO, his goalswere more definite. Despite his later much-debated recollection that he hadgon~ then~ to find a kinship system he had previously hypothesized to exist,the interview he gave to The WC.\CAus!mlian (R-B 191Ob) suggests rather thathe hoped to provide evidence for the hypothesis advanced at Cambridge onthe origin of roremism on hi h hi '" I .11

'-- ~ - W IC IS vIews were 10 Critlca respects Stlrather traditionaL Thus although Frazer had been forced to the conclusionthat totemism and exog'my w" ' , , "fu d II d" , ,, . ere msnrunom n amenta y rsnncr m on-gin and nature" (1910 I ") B II: , xu, rown sti saw them as intimately related, Heproposed nothing less than to "settle" the issues of the rotemism debate. TheAustr~lian Aboriginals "personified" a "stage" that "probably every race"-Includmg "our own an t "h d d h ., ces ors - a passe t rough. By studying all the varia-Clans of Australian marr'·'g" I· hi _~..l' • I· h" , , a ... regu aClons, ISeXp<;UltIon would cast Ig t onthe ortgm of the svsre " d '''. ..~ ...m, an on ItS progressive development" from two

to four and from four to eight" exogamous classes (cf, JSBL: R-BID. Batesn.d.).

The various aCCOUntsof Brown's Australian fieldwork suggest that it roo,w b ' ~ ,as at est a ra.xed success (Watson 1946:105-25; cf. Watson 1968 and Salter

1972), Once again how di h db ' ,ever! me locre et nography was to be transformefiy theoretICal reflection. Rather than reCOUnt what is known of his fieldwork,

rst amon~ the syphilitic Aboriginals incarcerated on Bernier Island and lateramong mamland grou h dh ps, or enter t e ehate about his debt to Daisy Bates,t e devoted ethnogmph· h ' .. N IC amateur w 0 for a time accompanied the expedi-tion ( eedham 1974, Wh' 1981)· .

, , ,Ite, It wdl be more worthwhile to turn to thesurvIvIng contemporary e id f h· d .v ence 0 IS eveloping theoretical viewpoint mcorrespondence he carried ' h h· .

ha ft h' on Wit ISmentor Rivers while living in Birmmg-m a er IS return to England early in 1912.3

3, Broken off late in 1912 the Bro /R'follow' d' -' wn Ivers Correspondence "", ...moo the summer of themg year an COntinued Into the elf 9material for ,h • d hell' ar y pan 0 I 14,This corresponde~ provides the source'~an t e '0 OWing sect 0_ h.rr d h ' lOn, U<:cause t e letters are almost all undated Ihavevuere no parem encal 't . h. 'offers more j . ,CI anons to t e Brown/Rivers correspondence. Langham (1981:373-74)

spec fie tJtatlons to envelopes 12027, 12039, 12058. and 12062 of the Haddon Colle<:-

f h dence is contained. Langham's read-rion (here cited as WHRPj, in which most 0 t e correspon L _ h d'd not have- . - . II f wn perhaps o<:causc e 1Ing of this material differs quite substann3 y rom my 0 • , I (19IJJ "

d' to Rivers' arlide on surVlva S ,access to Brown's critically important letter respon mg, 'b blication byb F~ ~ E pnor to ItS su sequent pucopy of which was made available to me y rcu ggan

Meyer rortes (R-B 1913b).

147

148 GEORGE W STocKING, JR.RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 149

sions of the human society." Although borh together constituted "the eoremkorganisation of the Australians," the former was more fundamental, since "asociety might possess the social organisation without the classification, but[not} ... the classification without some son of social divisions." But untilhe carried out his proposed field study of the "connection of the local or-ganisation, the relationship system and the totemic dans in tribes with femaledescent," he could not rebut Rivers' argument that the "intimate connection"of the latter two was "the result of blending."

In this context, Brown introduced new ethnographic data that were to bringmaUers more sharply into focus: the case of the Dleri of Central Australia,who had recendy been discovered to have a double system of totems, onewith male descent similar to those in Western Australia, and one with femaledescent similar to eastern tribes. In the next severalletters he advanced a "work-ing hypothesis" of the origin of the Dieri system: assuming a single develop-mental sequence of Australian totem ism, he argued that the Dieri representeda spe~ia! transitional state in which the newer western paternal fonn had beensupenmpcsed by borrowing in a tribe that still retained the older eastern mater-~al totems, Although he was able to justify this "imitation" by a lengthy con-~ectural argument, in evolutionary terms his position was, to say the least,Incongruous, and it left Rivers with an obvious diffusionary alternative. Int,he meantime, however, Brown Went on to react to Durkheim's recently pub-lished Eleme~tary FOrmsof the Religious Life (912), in which the interpretationof the totem Ism of another Central Australian tribe had even further com-plicated "the whole question of the evolution of roremisrn in Australia.".. ~rown had of COurse already accepted Durkheim's general thesis of thes~CIOIo.gicalorigin of religion," and he agreed with "almost everything" Durk-

helm said about the Ar B I .unta system per se. ut on certain more genera Issues,

he was critical Durkher h d I . I d.. ' . elm a not exp ained why totem objects were se ecte

from ~he practical economic life of everyday," and he was wrong about theevolutionary posttto fA· . [ hi

. no runta totelmsm. Reaffirming the hypothesis 0 1SCambndge lectures B d h " . I

'. ' rown argue t at the Andamanese "pre-totemic sociaorgamzatlOn had did· h" . . h. "d eve ope mto t e classificatory system of Australia" WitIts ual divisions" d' '. II hh, an Its ongma Y matrilineal clans. The Arunta, rat ert an bemg . "

O kh' ,pnmtnve, were a late stage. Beyond this, Brown disagreed withur elms definition of ' U d h.

I d h' totemlsm as above all" a name or emblem; an t ISe 1m to pose explicitly . d fi ., '. d

( certam e nltlonalissues 10 an unpreserve noteor notes) on the Conce t U '" " Ih . d h p s totemlsm and clan," The former apparent y em-p aSlZe t e presence of" 'fi . . . Id a speci c maglco-rehglous relation between the c anan some species of I b· " d

. b .. , natura 0 Jeet ; the laner was apparently that useIn a su sequent lener e h .. h"f k ' mp aSlZing t e distinction within the classificatorysystem 0 insh' b '

R" Ip, etween near and distant kindred" (d. R-B 19I3a:159).Ivers only extant lett ' h· fi d b.

er in t IS rst series was brief pointed an a It, ,

condescending. Accusing Brown of basing his definitions too narrowly onAustralian materials, he suggested this was justifiable only if one adopted theFrazerian view "that the Australians represent a stage in the evolution ofhuman society in general." Arguing that Brown's definition of cla,n was to~

narrowly genealogical, Rivers offered his own somewhat overlapping de~m.tions of the contested concepts: a clan was an exogamous group within a tnbe,whose members were bound together either by "a belief in common descent"or by "the common possession of a totem" (cf. Rivers 1914b:I, 7); ~otemismwas simply the term he used for "a form of soci~1 organisati~n , , : In whichthe totemic link forms an essential element of SOCIalstructure. Having chosenhis definitional ground, Rivers had no objection co Brown's explanati~n ofthe Dieri case "except that it assumes at the outset" what had co be expla,l,ned,If the Dieri already had two kinds of social grouping, Rivers saw easily how

. I·· id "ad practices ofone of them may have taken on the magtco-re 19lOUS1 eas .. ,western totem ism." But it was their presence in the first place that requiredexplanation, and by implication Rivers had an explanation even if Bfo~ndid not: they were a type case of the blending that characterized Australian

Culture, fi Id kBrown responded ro the definitional issues by appealing COhis e wor.

"rwo diff f social groups that may be to-In Australia there were tWO lIlerent sorts 0 . .

" " I' h b ed on the distinction be-remic", he used the term clan on y lor t ose as . .. . ki E ~ their defining characreristic,tween near and distant In, xogamy was no.

f h f h their members were nearly re-but simply the consequence 0 t e act t at c ,, ic and sometimes not sometimeslared. These groups were sornenrnes totermc a 'I. dd . b f male sometimes loca l2econstituted by male descent an sometimes y e, .' 1

did . h t "define terms In SOCIOogvand sometimes not. Although he I not W1S 0 " df I "tb coups seemed to corresponon the basis of Australian acts on y, t ese g ,

II d I 'but what was Importantfairly closely" to what were elsewhere ca e cans, .' ' 'was "not the name but the facts," On the question of Dien roterruc offer ine t'a

d 1 . h hi d atelv without 0 enng aBrown felt that he could not ca Wit t IS a equ " ... " al." In view of Rivers cnt!-theory of Australian social orgamsatlon In gener ' ,h· , b k h " postpolllng the papercisms, and many things in Durk elms 00, e w b d

h . eemed best to a an onin which he would offer it; and for t e present It s

the correspondence, h B h d beh I . ems clear t at fown a -Viewing the first exchange as a woe, It se , h f.1

. f d mor Despite t e aJ uregun to move Out of the relationship 0 stu ent-co-me. , I Ah d b h' , e published artlc es on us-of his Andaman kinship work, he a y t IStim d IR.

. h' If to acknowle ge Iverstralian kinship whose excellence RIvers Imse was , d fi '1924:194-201). The exchange aiso heightened his sensitivity to ceh~taln ~ n1;, . , h' in terms of ISempmcatlonal problems, which he inSIsted on approac mg '0 h <h <

d·· I I 'onary categones. n teo edata rather than in terms of tra mona evo utI 'I ., . diachrolllc evo utlonaryhand, his continuing underlymg commitment to a

150 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR. RAOCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

viewpoint, and his simultaneous unwillingness to insist on that viewpoint whenpushed on questions of "origin," compromised his position. When Riversthreatened to force him into a corner on an issue of conjectural history Brownbacked off from the battle. '

ese customs were invented or borrowed, or adopted "from their own earlyancestors," which "seems to me to be much the same thing." Whatever theirorigin, they must be "adapted to some need of the Andaman collective con-science (to speak teleologically, and not meaning a conscious need)." Histori-cal questions were no doubt interesting and important, but they did not "affectthe questions of causal relations in the present." As Durkheim argued, thesehad to do with how "the customs of a society" served "to maintain a certainsystem of ideas and emotions which in its turn is what maintains the societyin existence with its given structure and its given degree of cohesion." Draw-ing analogies to the study of language and examples from Andaman technol-ogy, Brown distinguished between "dynamical" and "statical" problems. Al-though the latter did not depend on the former, he was prepared to arguethat "in many cases the dynamic (historical problems) must depend on thestatic (psychological) problems."

With this letter, the separation of the two points of view was accomplished.The critical passages are those referring to "causal relations in the present"and "the needs of the Andaman collective conscience." The former rejectedboth the problem and the concept of diachronic causation; the latter redefinedthe framework of psychological interpretation from that of individual motiva-tion to that of thc functional needs of the whole culture. But there were stillother issues to be dealt with, and it is significant that they came togetherin relation to the problem of "survivals"-which was a critical assumption roboth the evolutionist and the Riversian historical approaches, and whichBrown admitted would, if accepted, compromise his position.

Responding to an article on "Survival in Sociology" Rivers published inOctober, Brown sent him the draft of an essay elaborating his view "of themethods to be adopted in the study of social institutions" (R-B 1913b). Hebegan by rejecting Rivers' antithesis of the "psychological" and the "histori-cal" methods. Following McDougall (1905:1), Brown defined "psychology" as"the science of human behaviour" of which sociology was simply that branchdealing with "those modes ofbehaviour that are determined in the individualby the society." Sociology in [Urn encompassed both static and dynamic (oras Rivers would have it, "psychological" and "historical") problems. Assumingthat there were "only a limited number of ways in which a human societycan be constituted," social statics sought the laws governing "the causal rela-tions subsisting between different elements of the same social organisation."Social dynamics dealt with "the causes that produce changes of social or-ganisation, and therefore with the origins of social institutions." Where heand Rivers disagreed was on the order in which these two sets of problemsshould be approached (R-B 1913b:3S-36).

In this context, Brown turned to the problem of survival, which Rivershad defined as a custom "whose nature cannot be explained by its present

Survivals and Causal Relations in the Present

By the time the correspondence was resumed. in the summer of 1913, Brownseems to have resolved the ambiguities of his position. One can only specu-~ate as to the, catalyst. Perhaps it is to this period that we may date rhe read-mg ofR~ssell s mathematical philosophy, which several writers have suggestedwas critical to Brown's development (cf. Singer 1973; Scanner 1968). It seemsmhocSch.kely,.however, that he went back to Durkheirn, and to the Rules oft e onologlcal Method-th fifth h f-. e c aprer 0 which argues for an essentiallysync.hrontc ~pproach to the explanation of social facts (Durkheim 1895:89-124).Bur It may Simply be that he [i d h hi - -if h' rea rae t at ISposition would be much stronger

e ~ut aside the diachronic framework in which he had previously beenoperating.

. Be th~t alsit may, the exchange opened on July 12, with Rivers comment-109 on t east chapters of The Andaman i,fa-"--- h- h B h d- d JIUt'n", W IC rown a men-none as soon to be forw d d hd' A ar e w en the previous exchange broke off theP'h'''1 l.ng ugus~, and which by now were already in proof form. Brown'swoe interpretation of And hsocial v I" . aman mvt as an expression of their "system of

a ues ran quite Count t h - R-that m th di -I d er 0 a r esrs Ivers had developed to the effecty or man y ealr with th d - _ -1912b) R' e rare an exceprional In native life (Rivers. IVers nevertheless fou dB'now he h - - _ d n rowns argument compelling, and it was'- w 0 rrururruze the dift be

II d· erences tween them. At the same time heca e anennon to th b 'call social - I h.e co~tra~t etween "psychological" and "what I should

ogrca or Istotlcal mr ."And I erpreranon, suggesting that the history ofaman cu ture might not b" h

In recpo fu h e SO opeless" as Brown seemed to feel.~ nse to rt er unp dgOt "to tho b t "f A reserve comments, Brown granted he had not

"- 0 tom 0 ndam k' h-from hic h an ms lp, and decided therefore to back off<> argument t at it wa" ]]

he continu"d _ I s rea y a pre-classificatory system"-although... pnvate y to belie' H-battlefield of . I h' ve It was. avmg thus withdrawn from the

conJectura lStory h fiself from issues f - _ R' ,e was now nally free to disentangle him-a ongm Ivers had a I - - -out that th.. pparent V continued to press by pomnng

..re were CUstoms s"1 thin the world T h- B Im\ ar to osc of the Andamanese elsewhere

. lOt IS rownnow' Isorry to hea th I' I' SImp y responded, "l am afraid you will be

r at lee qUlte com~ bl - - ddecided the issu f " Otta e With thlS"-that is to say, he hae 0 ongln was no J h -of view it was, n bl anger to t e poine, that from his pomtonpro em It d'd II. I not rea V matter whNher the Andaman-

151

152 GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.

utility bur only thro h i h" ..it" hnocenn-i ug Its past rsrory, Arguing that the notion of "uril-y was et nocenrnc (or as he put it .. bi . j B

calling the CUstoms coonecred . h h I su hJecnve, rown suggested that"useless" d d d . Wit t e mot er's brother in the Torres Strait

epen e on a pnor concept r "h fu dend f . " p. Ion 0 ten amenral purpose oro SOCiety. roposmg that soc' r be rded" ..

librium or balance f ~ f ~e ~ rega as a condition of equi-that its purpose waso"i[:~;s 0 co. esion a~d disr~ption," Brown suggestedand that the "utilit " b n COntinued existence In a state of equilibrium,"

Y -or errer the "social fu . .. ( , I' ,tion was the way it Ib _..I' ncrron -0 any socra msnru-, conm ured to this end He h ab'"non of survival- "In '. . re, [ en, was an iecuoe cnre-

. any given Instance the h hesi hsttcunon is a survi 1 d ypot esis r at a custom or in-va must epend on some h hesi h futhat such a CUstom fulfil ( ypoc esis as to t e nction

tween such CUstoms I~ ~r on the .nat~re ~f the necessary connections be-in effect to say that uan t e other msurunons of the society)" -which was

any argument about s . I. Ihypothetical solution f bl urviveu must necessarl y rest on

s a pro ems of social ... Ipeal to "the mental d" . . h statics, r was nor enough to ap-" rsposmon w ich we call '''C II' ,tron what in fact had b conservartsm. a mg mtc ques-

anthropology for at I eh'rnan unexamined methodological assumption ofeast ty years Bro - -' hneeded explanation. ~\V, ,wn suggesteu t ar conservatism itself

. . we must kno h . h' .vatlsm in general and h' w w at IS t e soc131 function of conser-d.lT w at IS the cause of ~h " f" ."

Illeren~ conditions~ (R-B 1913b:35_41) ~ e van8t10n 0 ItS mtenslty In

Pushmg his attack B .cal" structure of arg , rowfn argued, on the basis of an analysis of rhe ulogi.

uments rom surviv I h h'present condition f. as, t at t elr use to reason from "theo a SOCietyback t· ....d

edge of the principb f 'I . 0 ItS pas~ epended on a general knowl-k I 0 SOCIastatics Sin . h ' 'Inow edge ualmo" h. ,ce III t e present state of soclOloglC3

, ~cnot mgwask f hand of the laws that I h. nown ate functions of social institutions

. regu ate t elr relat" hsurvival were only of I "h Ions one to anot er," arguments from( vauewenwh"dnot based on survival h heave III ependent historical evidenceshort, the idea of sur. IYhPOdteses) as to the process of historical change,n In. Viva a only lim"ted 'I' rnon was as a foil. "I~. f . I Uti Ity or sociology; its main func-

. 'IS 0 extreme I . ,CUstomsin a SOCietyate real! . merest III SOCialstatics to determine which

In drawing his arm, Y surVIVals, if there be any suchn (R-B 19lJb:43-45).'f ·o~ment together B h'f db ktlon 0 the psycholo" I . ' rown Site ac to the general ques-

O kh glca explanation f 'I hur eim's Ru/e5) h, d fi d 0 sOCIa p enomena, which (following, e ne as urnod f h' ,mon to all or to a gre be es 0 t Illkmg, feeling and acting com-

hat nurn r of th be f dupon t em by the soci . If e mem rs 0 a society and impose, h ety Itse "[fRi Idmig t agree on the" . vers wou accept that definition, they

h Id proper task of the . Ie wau exclude think' SOCiaagist"; but Brown suspecred that" Ing and feell ng h d Iprocesses they could be". ,on t e groun S that as "purely menta

th . not directly b _..J" . dat Since actions we d . 0 servcu. AgalOst this Brown argueId b . re etermIned by ,h h " ,wou e Incomplete th dOd oug ts and feelmgs, any explanatlon

at I nor take them into consideration. But he felt

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

I

he could not proceed without having from Rivers an explicit definition ofsocial phenomena-and awaiting that, the manuscript broke off, in midpara-graph (R-B 1913b:45-46).~

Rivers' answer was brief. Without apparently considering the implicationsfor his theoretical position, he "very largely" accepted Brown's comments onthe issue of "urilirv." But he disagreed "absolutely" with his definirions of psy-chology and of social phenomena, and therefore felt that "as regards the mainquestion," his position was "wholly untouched." Refusing to go into the mat-ter by letter, he said that he planned to give a talk at Oxford the next summeron "the relations between sociology and psychology," and that meanwhileBrown might like-to "defer rewriting" the paper until he had a chance to readRivers' "little book on social organisation," which would appear shortly (R-B1913b33-34),

Although Brown professed to find "hardly anything in it with which I donot agree," and to look forward "snll more eagerly" to Rivers' forthcomingHistory of Melane5ian Society (l914b), the appearance of Kimhip and Social Or"ganisation (l914a) did not so much resolve matters as make explicit the factrhat the two were talking past one another. While in 1912 Brown had takenthe stance of the empiricist appealing to his data against a priori assumprion,now that he had finally achieved his own mature theorerical stance, he sawtheir roles reversed: whereas Rivers insisted that sociologists must confine rhem-selves Uta concrete or objective phenomena such as are capable of exact ob-servation," Brown insisted rhat this could only produce "empirical general-isations," never uexplanations,n and that social institutions were dependenton fundamental laws of psychology, Brown felt thar he got along umuch bet-rer and ever so much more rapidly" when he had "a working hyporhesis ofthe fundamental nature of human sociery, such as I have now." But this hy-pothesis uwould be quite useless" unless he uworked out the psychological ex-planations" as he went along. The advantage of this uconscious psychologicalmethod" was that it protected one from unconsciously accepting the "unsci-entific" assumptions of "popular psychology,n or of "the associationist intel-lecrualist psychology of thirty years ago." Rivers' empiricism in fact concealedsuch assumptions, and therefore rhey could neither reach agreement "nor evenproperly argue with one another" about specific issues.

Shortly thereafter, Brown offered some final comments in the course ofremarks on manuscripts each man had wriuen for the journal Anthropo5 onthe issue that more than any other had given focus to the anthropologicaldiscussion since 1900: the definition of totemism (Rivers 1914c; R-B 1914a).In opposirion to Rivers' continuing insistence on defining totemism as a

4. The versiol1 of this artide-dmft published by Meyer FortC5 omits a p.1renthesi, il1sertedby Brown explJil1ing the reason fm its Ul1finished state (R·B 1913b:46),

153

154 GEORGE W. SrOCKING, JR.

"form of social organisation," Brown proposed to cut through the empiricaland theoretical confusion surrounding the concept by using torernisrn to referonly to a "special magico-religious relation between each social division" and"some species of natural object." On this basis, he suggested rhar there were"five different forms of roternism in Australia which may have originated en-tirelv independently of one another," but between which there was "a closerelation of psychological dependence." Admitting that "his theoretical andmethodological bias" largely determined his choice of definicion, Brown stillinsisted his was better, since it was more adaptable to historical problems thanRivers' was to psychological problems, and because Rivers' in fact presupposeda specific theory of "clan toternism," But in the end he appealed simply to

his 'preiudtces". "What makes me ding so much to my own is that I do sostrongly feel the necessity of dealing with many psychological problems be-fore attempting to attack the historical problems."

In view of the fact that Rivers was for mosr of his career well-known asa psychologist, and Radcliffe-Brown was for much of his known to Opposepsychological interpretations, it seems more than a bit paradoxical that theirparting of theoretical ways should have ended on this note. One way of resolv-ing the paradox is to place both men once again in relation to nineteenth-century evolution, which (as Radcliffe-Brown was later fond of pointing out)had a dual character. On the one hand, the basic problem of evolution wasone of historical reconstruction, broadly conceived, and causation was con-ceived in diachronic terms. On the other, this historical reconstruction wasundertaken on the basis of a set of assumptions about the basic laws of hu-man psychology, which was conceived in essentially individualistic, utilitarian,and intellectualist terms. Up to a point, one can interpret the intellectual de-velopment of Rivers and of Radcliffe-Brown as alternate responses to the cri-sis in evolutionism in the conrexc of this basic duality. Rivers retained an his-torical orientation to the definition of problem and causation, but abandoned(for the moment) the psycholDgical approach, rejecting the problem of "rno-rive,' because he was unable at this point to conceive it in other than intel-lectualistic, individualistic terms (1916). In COntrast, Radcliffe-Brown rejectedthe historical problem, but retained (foe the moment) the psychologicalapproach-but on the basis of a redefinition of psychological assumption. "Mo-tive," construed in indiVidualistic, intellectualist terms, became 'function," con-strued in unconscious collective terms.

But however apt, this formulation of their opposition has nonetheless asomewhat fleeting situational character. Rivers was in (act shortly to turn againto psychology, when in the COurse of his wartime work with shell-shockedsoldiers he discovered Freud, who seemed to promise another route out ofthe crisis (Rivers 1917). And Radcliffe-Brown did not in fact immediately aban-don diachronic problems entirely; nor did he ever abandon an underlying

RADCLIFfE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Ph h b Sarah Neill Chinnery (courtesyW.H. R. Rivers in his Cambridge study, 1919. otograp Yof Sheila M. Waters).

.. h ce Rivers no longer stood incommitment to evolutioOlsm. Fun ermore, on I. hh. 0 rkheirman1 . 1 ldi ln w 1lC IS own ur ..., ,his path, he CaSt off the psycho ogica I 10m 111

alternative was initially phrased. h 1 erasion dur-f 1··· Anth pos was t eon y 0The brie definitiona oppostnon 10 TO .' N d bt. h fr d each other 10 pnnr. 0 ouingRivers'hfetim.ethatt e rwo rnen con onte A I· 1, r tri 1914

Bed to usrra If) a er , ,this was due in part to the fact that rown return B ' ems clear·1 11 ft th ar was over. ut It seremaining in the antipodes unn we a er e w ei forced

also that the POwer of his still-living mentor's person1 'flity mlay.have 1" n., not. h hi h tea otrnu anons. wasBrown's natural reticence to publis IS t eoren h db to adopt

. . J 1922 (h Brown a egununtil after Rivers' death 10 early une w en ) h h fi oily offeredb her' Odd] name t at e n"his mother's maiden and elder rot er S Jill e cliff been "The. t f the rrrerences etwin prior a strong programmatic staremen 0 " (R B 1932) With Rivers

Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology.· 'b· 1 for Brownk fd fi" n tr was pcsst eno longer preem.pting the framewcr 0 e OItlO ,

155

156GEORGE W. SrocKlNG, Ja.

to redefine their relati hl [airnicized "scctcl .. hose lip., ~ aiming for himself the field of a now dehistori-

ogy c-w ost re ationship '0 ps.cho'-" h "' "terms not dlssimil h' '""5)' e now In tact argued Inurn at to t ose Rivers had argued in 1916.

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 157

trusting uses of the concept "function," he implied that Malinowski had turnedfrom the strict Durkheimian path, while he had remained constant. Retro-spectively, he felt that Malinowski's article on "Culture" for the EnC)'dopediaof the Social Sciences (1931) marked a distinct break in his thought-the begin-ning of a final phase in which it was dominated by the individualistic biola-gizing functionalism ultimately systematized in the posthumous Scientific The-ory of Culture (1944).

While this account does indeed describe the movement of Malinowski'santhropology, which at one point he spoke of as an attempt to reduce Durk-heim to the terms of "behaviourisric psychology" (l935b:ll, 236), the histori-cal process is somewhat more complex. Just as Radcliffe-Brown tended retro-spectively to rationalize the development of his own anthropology, so did hetend to view Malinowski's development more discontinuously than was ac-tually the case. Even before he went into the field, Malinowski had expressedserious reservations about Durkheimian theory; and the position he later ar-ticulated in the article on "culture" had in fact been developing from the firsttime he encountered Freud in the context of his Tiobriand experiences (d.Stocking 1984).

On the other hand, Radcliffe-Brawn's structural interests took some timeto come sharply to the forefront of his own anthropology. That he spoke ofhis early work as "psychology" was not merely a function of Rivers' preemp-tion of "sociology" for diachronic inquiry. He had studied psychology withRivers, and had evidently been influenced also by the Social Psychology of Wi 1-ham McDougall (1908)-which in turn reflected the influence of the then highlyrespected Alexander Shand, who between 1890 and 1914 had attempted torealize John Stuart Mill's long-neglected project for a science of "ethology"(Shand 1914; Leary 1982). Shand's influence is in fact manifest in the earlywork of both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. Shand's conception of "sen-timent" was integral to the "working hypothesis" in terms of which Radcliffe-Brown interpreted the customs of The Andaman Islanders (1922:233~34); indeedin its Andaman phase, his anthropology was a study of the social formationof sentiments, and might appropriately be described as a "functional psychol-ogy of CUlture." It was only later that the social structural interests associatedwith this Australian fieldwork came to the fore. And even as late as 1931,when he first read Malinowski's article on "culture," he spoke of it as a "fine"piece, and regularly assigned it in the course on "The Comparative Scienceof Culture [sicl" that he continued to give throughout his stay at Chicago(Paul 1934; Rosenfels 1932).

In short, the theoretical falling out between the two lineage elders was aninteractive rather than an asymmetrical process. Although implicit in theirrespective intellectual temperaments and in their respective responses to Durk-heim and Rivers, it also depended on the grodual development of certain

The Romantic and Classical Modesin British Social Anthropology

Radcliffe.Brown was not the I .that helped c on y comnburor to the dehiseoricizing process

to rorm modern B .. h . Ia diachronic '0 h' nus socra anthropology_ The same shift from

a sync rome em h - L- C Iof Bronislaw M I" ki h p asrs may uc 10 lowed in the early work

a mows I-w 0 in 1913 I r d 'essay on Survivals (8MPY: 191 a 50 ~oun z:ason [0 criticize ~iver~cizing process was perha I 3 n.d.). ~r MallOowskl, however, the dehisrori-a by-product of Ps ess a reflection of theoretical reconsideration than

a new mode of ethnnar<> h' - . ~'f .a: 'recension 0(0 kher . _e.,up ic Inqulry_.-ur I Radclme-Brownsur elm provided h .

work of mode B"" h t e major portion of the theoretical ground-rn ntis social hiM'" .

wroughrcreation_myth rovidedant ropo ogy, ahl\()\l,'S1C1s ~1~-<OnsClouslytradition ref 5, kl Pl98 the charter (or the modern British fieldwork

. DC mg 3a).These contributions reflect h

two men whl h F" h d . t e respective intellectual temperaments of the, c rrr escnbed' ~L' ~

m~ntic" and the "classical" mod In aesUl~t1c te~~.as~~n~n~ rhe ro-pnority Over sc,"on,"' . es_For Mahnowskl, Imaginative IOslght" had

'- I C generall . 'f h "'~"regularih' mean, ' " "h ~anon, I t e lormal expression" of observt:U'1 IOrclng t ed .. f ".cial mold." Fo R d "a IVersltles 0 the human creamre into an artl -

r a c hie-Brown h I _...I • • •straint the not'"o r ~ ' w 0 va ucu pIlXISlon, proportlon, and re-

, no system" h d . . hfull COntent of ph a pnorlty, sometimes "to the neglect of t eenomenal real' .. I ~postulatcs ofg

TO'. Ity. n COntrast to Malinowski's need to test

up action In term f" d" "d Iways emphasized h ~r so In IVI ual action," Radcliffe-Brown a-t e [Ormal q I" . h

systems" (Firth 1951:480). ua Itles m erent in the StruCture of groups as

The anthropologicalpel1lmenc-thei . consequences of these differences in intellectual tem-"k" r respective attitud -...l h" "II~"tnshlp algebra" th . . es towa,u w at Malmowski sometimes ca t:I..l

. ,elr contrastm .. . "d IanXiety and soci I" I g Interpretations of the relation of mdlvI uaa ntua or the' d'a . "-are well-known d' lr Ilierent conceptions of a S(X:ial"institutlOn,an needn tb h1941). But if Firth' r .0 ere earsed here (cf. Parsons 1957; Homans

I· s ormulatlon d .1 " " htwo tneage elder '. ley epitomizes the contrast between t eII S,ltlsasotrueth h d" da ybecamematter f" I att e Ifferencesberweenthemonlygra u-fR so mtelectu I .o adcliffe-Brow' h . a controversy, and that the later elaboration

ns t eoretlca!' . h"COnteXt. VIewpoint can only be understood in t IS

After Malinowski hadaCCOunt of their in, II passed from the scene, Radcliffe-Brown offered an

e ectual reI' h"anOns Ip (R-B 1946). hxus.sing on their con-

1

.h<me, 1ft ach -.,". 'houdu. and d.. __ '" .. 10m. Fun,,"-(h~Pt'OCt'SI C JJl-It 110I NmpIy an aft -.,.. mcrOeauaJ realm. bur inwc neeu ollhnr chanp"l lIhrnnUn,. lftIhfUoonaI stJiJC(lIm,

w hlCh '_nd 1910........". .- ...... '-pm_ '" ,""omrol.rt:5Ourt'ts and ~ntl

Supermen ni/ed ( m 60r (, r Functional Amhropol"iY

By the fltnt' Mllfu-.c:... .m~ 1ft london I ~ ruFllth ilInthropollgr'n 1910. !\ockl./f e.s.-.,. ""-" '0 ,-" rm '" 11 1... Ahhooghbrxh reen ...... 'n e.....ndr.- 1911 '0 19/i. nd~Loh >I<i ouuaI/, foI10\1.'«1In 8ro'l,n', cpa &tn..ra _ ..... London hooI of EconooUcsin 1913_ Ii CFtrrh 1'151). Bro.-n Iet:fftI, to ~~ sprnc has nnw: In Birmingham,and the two did rtoe' _ru..lly tneu Until AutuN 1914 M dtC' Ausualian meft-

ings of the Bmtsh ~1Of\. Dr ..... IIUIW Brown h.td pr.llued Malmo\l4"sfirst tnoOOgraph (lqJ l) .... rnodd ollDnhcxr and an ~hdmmg argtl'

menr" again,t «he r1o'OIullQnary hypodtais oI-lI"Oup mJrnagt"-althoug!J Itt~'as Cmlcal of the- t~l1nt'nt 01 "UN"",-n "u,,",up WUhool rUtn-nCt to (hesYS{emof clans and l'lla"""lr fR.-B ,qNb). Nout~ ht $Ubstquenclyrecalla:t that their 'cnilhy dJ.fiCUt8ont- .. rhtt tUM hadendrd in "fair/yrom"pletea~ment" (I~" ""

~~ ~~Both mon ..... on 'ho ... "h ..... I'oafic clun .. ll"dd 11•• 1.bu.' ./d,,,,,. on'<lI«.u.' <00<"", bot "'n 'horn ....... "'" .0 h.. " ,.un pi",",;.after the publicatIOn of th~r ''&-0 landmark I'IIonOpaptu of 1922. MahrJOll'SIhad ap"""'ndy """on '0 !\ockM .. 8"""" pn ng 110< I\ndaman ~_.i'hough hOJma""nal" on • .."". ,h•• la, inrn h. J'OS"S"oo ...'the " , hu .1. _L_ f'f1S(ICCOn-SOCiety, t ~ry bloodyman and "'Oman' ~fkame uwnlCt of'nos, be

ow..

n,h,,, viewpoonu (BM5C, R.B 192H;J~ IIhhough a "'~ ...

A""""uu had 00< yeo _hod h,m 'n Sou,h AI"",. RadcIdT .. Brown nL

•.•

theless

r- ......nded· 'L_£-tion- }.lillm-, ---,..u on a.imllar noteof' muruailmelleaualK.Kfll1llU1 . k Ex.

ow.k.,. Bal...,. sa,d thongs ho wuhod ho hod 'ooudcd on hi>own boo c:,1~,

~'''"ng ,h, hopo

,ha, M.hno..oki migh, Jom hom on ,I>< 0.", Town r~rn/'. ~POnded '0 • quo.y 'bou, .h ... , ...... d,/fusron"", of EJliooSm" ;nd

Wh'/ham

P,,,y by ""ailing hOJd.ba •• with lli,....on 1913-14.Frobcnm' ,ht e Americaru bodol "calapproawere mare re-liable but the gltllt!ral md: <JgI hesiswas a~ "unsound" as the "old com~ratl\-'t' method- of framing an hYJX>.cdnc~SCOUting the w ld (, nJi ~l---: theevi eh d- or Or co rmatory dara, and simply ,~ ...ng

t at ,d no, n, fBMPy, R-B/BM 11/6122) . .Malinowski f . h- -diffusionlstS,

h' 0 CourksharedanantiP3thYIOthe_hehoht lC sh" rsl......IS ChOPfkOfOne of Rivers' Works Includes thedoggerd "It gives ~ the slVt'-th"JO t In of POOr D-. ......1 Elliot ml

"IVers / Being made a megalith / fur our loru

B NO BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOCYRAOCLIFFE- ROWN A

k d the Depanm~ntf Helena Wayne Malinows a an "Bronislaw Malinowski, ca_ 1925 kounesy 0" )

of Anthropology, london School of EconomIcs"

/59

160 GEORGE W. STocKING, JR. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 161

(BMSC, Rivers t924:174). But it is interesting that at this time both men stillentertained the possibility that distribution studies might cast light on thehistory of culture. Radcliffe-Brown had in mind a complete study of the dis-triburion of Australian cultural elements-although he insisted that any his-torical hypothesis must be based also on a consideration of each element "inrelation to the cultural system in which it occurs" (BMPY: R-B/BM 11/6/22;d. 8M 1922:232).

A year later, the note of mutual identification was again struck. Congratu-lating Malinowski on his recent appointment at the london School of Eco-nomics, Radcliffe-Brown commented on the fact that both suffered from re-current respiratory illnesses-which in his own case made it likely that he wouldspend most of his life in the antipodes, despite his longing for the amenitiesof European civilization. And he was struck by a singular similarity in theiranthropological interests: Malinowski's essay on "The Problem of Meaningin Primitive Language," (1923) recalled an unpublished draft on Andamanlanguages in which he, too, had sketched a new linguistic method (d. R-B1932:495-504). The rest of the letter, however, is in a retrospectively moreexpected mode. His teaching was now "almost entirely from the sociologicalpoint of view": "pouring out" the "accumulation of twelve years thinking," hewas giving his students "a theory of social structure, a theory of kinship, oflaw, of religion, and a theory of art." Given five lives, he might write on themall, but for the present he proposed to concentrate on Australian kinship andtoternisrn, and on African law (BMPL R-B/8M 5/22/23; d. Schepers n.d.).

When plans began to be developed about this time to establish a chairat Sydney as the focus for anthropological work in Oceania, both Malinow-ski and Radcliffe-Brown were obvious prospects. Malinowski, now on the wayto establishment at the intellectual center, felt that his primary commitmentwas to the London School of Economics, and he wrote to Haddon (one ofthe electors) that Radcliffe-Brown was "as alike in his outlook to me as is pos-sible in such an unsettled science as ours" (BMPL: BMiACH n.d.). Radcliffe-Brown's eventual selection (over A. M. Hocarr) provided the occasion for asecond face-to-face meeting, when both men were brought to the United Statesin 1926 under the auspices of the Rockefeller philanthropies. Radcliffe-Brownvisited several American universities on his way to take up the Rockefeller-funded chair in Sydney, and Malinowski conducted a survey of Americananthropology for the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial (Stocking 1978c).This was the year in which Malinowski published his functionalist manifestoas the. article on "Anthropology" in the Encyclopedia Britannica (l926a); andRadch~e-Brown later recalled that, staying together at the Yale Club in NewYork CIty, they had disagreed over "the most convenient and profitable wayto u~e the word 'function' in social anthropology" (1946:39). Although thiswas Indeed the issue on which later theoretical confrontation was to hinge,

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Sydney. Austr:llia, ca. 1930. Photograph by Sarah Neill Chinnery(counesy of Sheila M. Waters).

162 GEORGEW. SrocKI '0, JR. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 163

contemporary documentary evidence does not yet convey a sharply focussedsense of opposition.

In May of 1927. Malinowski apologized to Radcliffe-Brown for not havinganswered some unpreserved communication: -8m sun::ly we supermen neednot stick to any convemions, and I alwavs feel mat my lowering spirit andyours touch above the highest levels of microcosmic: nebulas and there gazein silence at one another." Pleased that Radcljff~Brown was "taking over- his"best pupil," Raymond Finh, who would appreciate Radcliffe-Brown's ·poimof view in theory," Malinowski suggested that he might also like to considerFirth as lecturer (BMPl: 8M/R-B 5/11/27). ~Iying that he already had Firthin mind as Successor, Radcliffe-Brown congratulated Malinowski on his re-cent promotion to professor, and wondered ifperhaps Malinowski might helpget him a job in Europe that would allow mort: time to wrtre (BMPY: R,BlBM8/29127).

In the same letter, Radcliffe-Brown raised several points of theoretical differ-ence suggested by his reading of the first half of So and Repression in SamgtSociel'y (927). Commenting on Malinowski's presentation of the Trobriandsas a social order based on ~mother-right," he insisted that all kinship was in-herently bilateral. It was now thirty years since: Durkheim had distinguishedparent;! and coruanguinile (ef. Maybury-Lewis 1965), and in these terms theTrobriand father and son were consanguineous kin, even if they failed to rec-ognize the relationship. Beyond this, he felt that in general Malinowski hadconceded entirely too much to the Freudian viewpoint, 'Oting that he him-self had read ev-erything the Freudians had written on the topic of mythology,he insisted that it was valueless.

The first two essays on Sex and Repression had been Malinowski's conuibu-tion. to the general upsurge of anthropological interest in psychoanalytic t~e-ory In the early 192Os-an interest pioneered of course by Rivers (cc. Stocking.1984).But when Ernest Jones rejected OUt of hand any attempt to revise F~ud.Ian orthodoxy in the light of comparative ethnographic data, Malinowski hadCOUnteredwith a sharply critical attack on Totem and Taboo, in which he drewo~ Shand's concept of "senetmenr" to develop the idea of culture as creertoga secondary environment~ that modified the instinctual endowment of man,In retrospect, Malinowski's argument On these issues seems clearly an earlyformula~on of his later psycho-biological functionalism 0927:204-8; d, 1944)·If Radcltffe-Brown in 1927 evinced no trace of his later criticism, it is perhapsbecause he was himself in this period still speaking of the "biological function~of~Culture" in im . h ... , _..J h n beings. posing t e common sentiments" that umrec umaInto ~~ial groups (1930:269). Indeed, after reading the second half of Malin-owsk! s book h b . f . obi In the. ' e sent a ne note withdrawing all of hIS JectiOns,end, Malinowski h d d h h h hi If \.\'oulda granre t e Freudians no more t an e rmse(BMP'!' R·B/BM 9/5/27).

. h b Sarah Neill Chinnery (courtesy ofRaymond Firth, Sydney, Australia, 1932. Phorograp vSheila M. Wm:ers),

164 GEORGE W. STocKING, Ja. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 165

The matter of bilaterality of kinship was subsequently pursued by Radcliffe.Brown in the COntext of debate with Rivers' follov.<tt Brenda Seligman overthe interpretation of the Ambrym data cclleceed by Bernard Deacon beforehe died of blackwater fever in 1927 (d. Langham 1981:200-243; Larcom 1983).Radcliffe-Brown attributed Rivers' earlier difficultiQ with the Ambrym male-rial to his inability to allow for the coecseence of matrilineal and patrilinealinstitutions-remarking in a footnote that even 50 -acute- a thinker as Mal-inowski had been similarly misled. Kinship-the reccgmdcn of genealogicalrelations as the basis for the regulation of social relations-was always "nee-essarily bilateral." In COntrast, descent-the entrance of an individual into asocial group as the child of one of its m~mben-was alway$ necessarily 'uni-l~tera~." t,f anthropologists would give up tbe old evolutionary (and the newdiffueionlsr) attempt to classify whole societies as either "matrilineal" or "patti-~ineal:" and instead apply those terms to the speci6c institutions of descent,mherltance, succession, etc., they would think "much more dearly: In thiscontext, Radcliffe-Brown offered a general plea for a -functionalist" anthro-~logy, and (despite his foornore) pointed to Malinowski as its best exemplarm England (R-B 1926, 1929a. 1929b).h Malinowski ~s of Course gratified. and early in 1929 responded with the

ope that Radchffe-Brown would indeed soon return to Europe, where therewas plenty of room for two upholders of the functionalist method (BMPl:BM/R-B 3/25/29)_ He did, however later respond in print to the issues thatRadcliffe-Brown had '~_..J. ' 11~~'h ~raisec, 10 a general treatment of what he ca eu r elm·passeonkinship"Th ' [kihin n ,at Impasse would never have- arisen ·if the study 0 em-Slptleshadbee ted t h fh'. . n carne In r e field along with the life history 0 t e m-dividual if terrni I ' I 1h d

bee- no ogres, ega systems, tribal and household arrangemeo"a een studied in f d f ~~-'," process a evelopmem and not merely as xeo pruu

"f'''h' Bu.t although he spoke of clan relationships as "one-sided distortions"o r e onginal pa I 1 'h . renra re atlonship and promised subsequently to return to

t e ISSue,he seem' It h 'I I'fd SlOe ect to ave accepted the point about the um atern ley

o escem (1930'156 161) T'\ __ ' _ • _ lib<,- , ' uesplte denslve comments about the vast gotween the pseud h . I '

d h o-mat ematlcal treatment of the too-learned anthropo oglstan t e real facts of I'" d ofR d I'd B savage lie (151), he was in general quite lau atory

a c llle- rown' 1". cr s app ICatlon of "the functional methoo.- Indeed, he seemsm enect to have b d d h. a an one the whole problem to Radcliffe-Brown from t atPOInt on, leaving th h k' h~t he many c apter drafts of his promised book on InS Ipo gat er dust i h' ff'By th" n IS0 Ice files (cr. FUnes 1957- Stocking 198Ib).

IStlme the int h f • F' h ""b '. ' erc ange 0 students previously initiated by Ittegmnmg to de I . .nar and R d [,:e °BPInto a regular traffic between Malinowski's London semi-

a Cine- rown's roo . S h he wassending H p rns In ydney. Malinowski wrote t atonense owder k 1 ' ' '1" r Mdeey R'"h d rna er a cng. Inquired about pos5.lblltles or

ar 5 ande d ' df!u', ven won ered if something might be done for hiS I

sionist rival William Perry-with whom he had got "chummy" lately, and whowith fieldwork experience might even become interested in the "tight" kindof anthropology (BMPL: BM/R·B 3/25/29), Radcliffe-Brown responded thathe was leaving the selection of Powdermaker's site to E. P. Chinnery and Greg-ory Bateson, that a year's research money was available for Richards, thatIan Hogbin would be coming to London for a year when he finished his On-tong Java fieldwork, and that while there was a shortage of funds, he wouldsee what he could do for Perry (BMPL: R-B/BM 7/9/29; d. Stocking 1982),

Despite some hints of the lineage segmentation yet to come, the 1920sendedwith the leaders of functionalist anthropology still maintaining between them-selves and to the world at large a theoretical and methodological united front.Writing to Malinowski on the last day of the decade, Radcliffe-Brown recalledhis youthful decision to devote his life to "the scientific study of culture." Thetrouble with anthropology was its name, which by tradition included suchstudies as physical anthropology and prehistoric archeology-which he hopedhe would never again have to teach. He was now planning to leave Sydneyin 1931 to get a job in America or, preferably, Europe. Despite his respiratoryproblems, he was ready to try even Cambridge or Oxford, just as long as hedid not have to teach courses on "The Races of Man." In this context, hewas much in favor of a scheme Malinowski had for establishing a "ColonialInstitute," and offered himself as the only man "in the British Empire whohas been lecturing regularly on the principles of Native Administration," Onceback in England, "you and I and anybody else who will help us" could joinin building up "the new sociology or anthropology that is needed" (BMPL:R-B/BM 1'2131/29),

Rivalry for Influence in the Rockefeller Foundation

In fact, Radcliffe-Brown's return from the anthropological periphery, in thecontext of competition for influence with major sources of institutional sup-port at the center, was to lead to the first serious rifts in the united front forfunctionalist anthropology,S Malinowski's "Colonial Institute" was part of adeveloping plan to win major support for anthropological field research l~

the functionalist mode. Involved in competition with the diffusionists at Uni-versity College where Perry's seminars for a time attracted more students thanh-' 1 'd' to the fieldIS own Malinowski could not afford to re y on 10 Irect accessresearch'on which the "revolution in anthropology~ was to be grounded. WithRockefeller support in Oceania organized since 1926 under Radcliffe-Brown's

5. The argument in this section draws from a yet unpublished paper (Stocking 197&), where

funer documentation will be provided.

166 GEORGE W. STocKING, JR. RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 167

aegis, Malinowski began to explore possibilities for African research. By 1929he had joined forces with Dr. ]. H. Oldham, a leading figure in the recentlyestablished International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, in acampaign to win support for a "practical anthropology" oriented toward prob-lems of African colonial development. Faced with a competing initiative fromthe politically influential Rhodes House at Oxford, the African Institute for-warded to the Rockefeller Foundation in March of 1930 a printed appeal for£100,000 over a ten-year period.

That fall, while both these proposals were under consideration Radcliffe-Brown suggested [Q the Foundation that they be included, along with therenewal of the Sydney grant and a proposal he offered for research at CapeTown, within a "concerted plan" for a series of "functional" studies of all"surviving native peoples." He had been invited to serve as president of theanthropology section at the centenary meeting of the British Association inLondon, and he proposed to make his visit the occasion (or "doing all in mypower to bring about a world-wide cooperation in the systematic scientificinvestigation of the backward cultures" (RA: R-B/M. Mason 11/17/30). Al-though the Found~tion voted in April 1931 to make a $250,000 five-year grantto the Afncan lnstiture, when Radcliffe-Brown stopped off in New York thatsum~er, ~undation officers were quite receptive to the idea of a 'general re-consideration of their anthropological commitments.

In Septem.ber 1931Radcliffe-Brown made his long-delayed reentrance upon~he m.etropohtan anthropological scene. During the 19205, Malinowski, hold-I~g high the banner of "functional anthropology," had been able to pushhimself through a motley d f' I' - . .crow 0 agmg eva unorusts retired colonial eth-nographers, an~ ~iffusionist children of the sun to win rhe central place upont~e stage of British anthropology as writer, teacher, and chief informal ad-visor to both the Rockefeller Foundation and the Colonial Office (d. Kuklick1978). But at the moment h h' I I d!w en IS TO e as ea mg man of functionalist an-thropology seemed gua t d b k hran ee , ac upon r e stage from the colonial wingscame Radcliffe-Brown, as the featured speaker "On the Present State of An-~hropo!ogiCal"Studies" at a major scientific gathering (R-B 1931a). GrantedIt was only a cameo" ap d '. . ~earance unng a stopover on his way to a new ap-pomtmen~ at the UniverSIty of Chicago, the reports Malinowski received whileon sabbatical leave in the south f F hb . o. ranee were sue as to cause second thoughtsa out cl~se collaboration with his fellow anthropological "superman."

Radchffe-Brown was unde t ki dvi 01. . r a 109 to a vise dharn on the implementa-tion of ~he Afncall Institute's "five year plan" of research. Worse yet, Oldhamwas taklng seriously his dvi h h '. a vice t at rescarc be carried on in strictly scientificnonevaluatlve terms focuss' . I'e ', mg on eccnornn; He m its relation to social struc-ture and "social cohesion" (BMPL: Oldham/BM 9/9/31) F h d'

fM I, k·' . romt estan polOto a mows I s more loosel· . fu ' , ,y mtegratlve nctlonahsm, the study of economiC

life implied "the study of all the other essential aspects of culture," and theorymust be constantly cross-fertilized by practice: any investigation carried onwithout regard to "whether certain changes would be ruinous to a societyor benefit it" would ncr help to forward the practical adrninistrarive goals bywhich the grant had originally been justified (BMPL: BM/Oldham 9/12131).Although a compromise was worked out by Malinowski's "lieutenants" Gor-don Brown and Audrey Richards (BMPL:BM/Oldham 9/13131), they wereboth concerned lest Radcliffe-Brown would somehow "snaffle" the money whenhe arrived back in the United States (BMPL: Richards/BM [9124/31]).

The situation was further complicated because Radcliffe-Brown's actualpresence in London was having some influence on certain members of theMalinowskian circle-notably, Evans-Pritchard. Two years previously, Evans-Pritchard had written to Malinowski suggesting a correlation between his field-work experience and his theoretical orientation: "no fieldwork/Durkheim'sviews"; "limited fieldwork/Radcliffe-Brown's views"; "exhaustive fieldwork/Malinowski's views" -which Malinowski had blue pencilled to indicate onlya uvery short distance" from "God's view" (BMPL: E-P/BM 11/25128). Now,however, in the context of personal friction with Malinowski, Evans-Pritchardwas moving back toward Radcliffe-Brown. Meyer Fortes spoke of his "particu-larly vivid recollection" of the evening in Evans-Prichard's "sumptuous Blooms-bury flat" when Radcliffe-Brown, "with characteristic self-assurance," gave "awhole lecture on lineage systems, ending with the recommendation to lookup Gifford on this subject" (Fortes 1978:2,6-7; cf. BLUA: R-B/E. W. Giffordcorrespondence 1922-23). As perceived by Malinowski's lieutenants at thetime, the encounter portended "possibilities of yet future str-ife!" (BMPL:Richards/BM [9/24/31]; cf. BMPY: E. Clarke/8M 9124/31).

Such fears must have seemed confirmed when Radcliffe-Brown wrote to

Malinowski suggesting that the School of Oriental Studies, which at this pointalso had an application before the Rockefeller Foundation for massive sup-POrt, was the logical center in England for the future development of anthro-pology (BMPL: R-B/BM 9/27131). Pursuing the matter in a letter from <=:hl-cago, he asked Malinowski's cooperation in winning from the Foundanon£50000 a year for his worldwide ethnographic salvage plan (BMPL: R-B/BMn,d.). Malinowski forwarded the correspondence to Oldham and to his c~l-I, S h I f E . ith comments of direeague Seligman at the London c 00 0 conomles wforeboding: if "Radcliffe-Brown got into England, it would be a damn badjob for our [African] Institute," and would "probably mean that our depart-ment at the School would have to be scrapped" (BMPL: BM/Oldham 12/20/31;

BM/Seligman 12115/31). .. .. He draftedToward Radcliffe-Brown Malinowski adopted a delaying pohcy.

. '. off B h was even morebut did not send a letter suggcsnng that Radeh e- rown, w a .sociological than himself, should of all people see the importance of keeplllg

T

,I

168GEORGE W. STocKING, JR.

anthropology in . I "a socra science context at the 1..0 d(BMPL: BM/R-B 12115/31) N did h . n on School of EconomicsBrown wrote early in 1932 '110t f' hi e quickly answer the letter Radcliffe-

te mg 0 15efforts to 0 . A "pologists in Support of rh .. " . h! rgamze mencan anrhro-'- varus mg cultures" h ding the School of Oriental Stud" he si sc erne, an once more push-be

res as t e Single best l .tween all British anth I' . center lor cooperationropo ogrsts and a simi! A .would emerge at Yale E h"" h ar mencan center he expected

. mp aSlZlng t e delica f ch .gested that the only alre . cy 0 r e negonations, he sug-rnanve to a plan that all' E I d

was one centered in the U . d S In ng an could agree onki rure rates and that h h d hS 1 Soon in order to decid hi h • e a to ear from Maiinow-

It was not until April w~ W hie h t~ work for (BMPL; R-BlBM 1/30/32).ing in the Rockefeller Fou'nd e~ e ha a better sense of how winds were blow-. anon t at Mali k· Ii alltime, Malinowski's influen h d be nows I n y responded. By that

ce a en e facr . defin!grant to the School of 0 ; I S do _ c or In re e nlng a scaled-downnenra tu res In t I

competitive to the African I " (BMP erms camp emenrary rather thanh nsnruce Y: BM/S' E 0

t ermore, the Foundation h d d id d' If.. Ross 2114/33). Fur-l- a eCI e to cond fca Institutions throughout the w ld be uc~ a survey 0 anthropclogi-

to the "vanishing Cultures" h 0'1 .fore coming to a decision in regardd sc erne. n thiS Conte R d I"f! B 'ue arguments for the S h I f On xr, a c I e- rowns contin-h

c 00 0 nenral Stud'am ropology-which he would b .. les as a cemer for "functional"found (BMPL: R-B/BM 5/25/32) e Willing to direct if no one else could be

d -were less threat" d M I" "sume a cooperative stant H enmg, an a mowskL re-o . e. e even suggest d h hSituation was to "get peopl I"k e t at t e real key to the English

" eel eyourselforRa dF" hIn ambridge and 0 ~ d" . ymon In to occupy the chairsh x or , proposing tharrh d' he came to lecture in the U . d S ey 15[USS t e whole maner whenby this time Radcliffe-Bra nth" d dtat~s (BMPL: BM/R-S 812l/32)-although

h " wn a eClded hesh Id "so t at our mode of think; ~ I ou stay In the United StatesI ,ng wou d help Id hsa vage scheme (BMPL. R B/BM 9 rna t e worldwide ethnographic

finally met again in Ch·· - . 11/32, 10/22/32). However when the twof 0 lcago In April 1933 h '~om which it never recovered After .' t at plan had suffered setbacks

ell'S, the Rockefeller Found .' ... a drastiC reevaluation of its funding poli-f h 0 anon 100tiated a 'o researc In anthrapolog h' h years moratorium on all funding

drawal from existing com ~,w IC .was in fact followed by a phased with-mltmenrs In the field.

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 169

deriving theoretical differences began to come to the fore. Malinowski by thistime had second thoughts about the advantages of interchanging students.Although at one point he was willing to have Meyer Fortes go to Chicagofor advanced study, he decided that Fortes had better stay in London (BMPL8M/Oldham 317/32); thenceforth, all the African Institute's Rockefeller fel-lows were pushed in the same direction. It was also at about this time thatMalinowski began to take to himself the credit for founding the "FunctionalistSchool of Anthropology," although in a characteristically joking manner: itwas a title he had "bestowed by myself, in a way on myself, and to a largeextent out of my own sense of irresponsibility" (R-B 1946:39).

In 1934 it was he rather than Radcliffe-Brown who first publicly threw downthe theoretical gauntlet by insisting strenuously on a fundamental differencebetween their points of view in his introduction to Ian Hogbin's Law andOrder in Polynesia. Offering an extended critique of Radcliffe-Brown's articleon "Primitive Law" in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (R-B 1933)-whichhe took as an implied criticism of his own Crime and Custom {1926b)-Malinow-ski appealed to his article on "Culture" (1931) as the basis for a "functionaltheory of custom" that would start from the "living, palpitating flesh and bloodorganism of man which remains somewhere at the heart of every institution."Although he suggested that the "only point of theoretical dissension betweenProfessor Radcliffe-Brown and myself, and the only respect in which theDurkheimian conception of primitive society has to be supplemenred" wasthe "tendency to ignore completely the individual and eliminate the biologi-cal element from the functional analysis of culture," he made it clear thatthis tendency "must in my opinion be overcome" {l934:xxxiii, xxxviii).

Radcliffe-Brawn's nlther acerbic response disclaimed association with "thefigment of an automatically law-abiding native," and suggested that the varie-gated nature of social sanctions was an "elementary truth" that required theconstruction of strawmen-opponenrs so that it courd be "claimed as a discov-ery made by him in the Trobriand Islands." Denying that he ignored the in-dividual and eliminated the biological in the functional analysis of culture,he suggested that'their really important differences were in "the uses of words."The "slow and laborious process of establishing a scientific terminology" inthe social sciences required exact definitions that had the same sense in allsocieties and did not conflict with current usage. So far as he could tell "with-out the aid of a definition" it seemed that Malinowski meant by "law" any"socially sanctioned rule of'behaviour." lfhe would only stick to that meaningin his writings, "he would find that not only do I not disagree with him, butneither does anyone else, since the greater part of his statements are common-places of social science, only made to appear novel and profound by a noveland obscure use of words" (1935a).

Obviously chagrined, Malinowski ironically pled guilty to creating a straw

The .O~enin~ of Theoretical FissuresIn unctlOnal Anthropology

Although the' f ". ISSues0 lllstitutional influtween Maltnowski and Rad I"f! B .ence that exacerbated relations be-

. C! e- rownl ha time into the background h n t e early 1930s thus receded forcontinued to affect their rel;ti~:s~nse of .O~~sition they had engendered

p, and It IS In this COntext that their un-

170 GEORGE W. STocKING, JR.

ma.n by having described Radcliffe-Brown as one of social anthm I 's "rrericallv most acute thinkers" P .. full d po ogy heo-where he pref d f h' rorrusmg y to ocumem his criticism else-truism' b . ertC

hmht e moment to defend himself against charges of

y notmg t at w en he had ad ed hi ~ hticns" before he we h Ti bn vane IS t eory of primitive sane-

. nr to r e ro rtands, authorities h E S Hidhad rejected it Like R d I'ft B sue as . . art anences between'thom .. a C I e'

lrown, ~owever. he srill minimized the differ-

... ,ltwasonyregard .. - Ihe had' d" dt mg primitive aw and economics thatventure LSagreement .. . fi

ful'. on certain speci cpoincs"(193') 10

Clrcumscn - f diff ...a . at care-inowski came~:o~h~ I ~renAceseems still to have been manifest when Mal·

!Cago In pril 1935 and srud ---' C Ibate with Radcliffe-B Al h ' ents arranged a rorrna de-rown. tough a "blood" f .expected the chairm H Id Lycan ronrancn was apparently

, an, am asswell d "bed " -IMalinowski is said to h d' escn It as a ave fest" -[0 which

ave respon ed: "Th fu " f Id(McAllister 1978). . e ncnon a a age is tolerance"

Privately, too, relations between the . .was in fact to plav a I' I' . m remamed cordial, and Malinowski

roe In reauztng R d nr. B' -career with a major Engli he. a c I e- rowns hope of capping hisIS professorial chai W' h h "I f h 'attempt to enlarge rhe i . . r. It t e rat ure 0 is rival's

e mstltutlonal framework" hi h Rockwas dispensed and th d I" t: m w IC efeller support

, e ec mmg rcrtunes of th d'ff " Iversity College Mali k' e I uSlomst enc ave ar Uni-, nows I was left in . ,thropology. The first d' a very strong po51t1on in British an-M

aca emlC generation darett, and Seligman wa' represente by Rivers, Haddon,k' h s passmg and amon h" If ' '

S I ad achieved a Brit" h C ~ g t elr 0 spnng only Mahnow-IS prOlessonal chao Wh "

his opinion was very I'k I Ir. en It came to filling such chairs,d'd ley to carry weight D \.. h"I ate for the chair at 0 ~ d h . ec mmg lmself to be a can-ing to his "genius" at org

X~r., deproposed Radcliffe-Brown instead, testify-

(BM anltlng epartment . ShAn. PL: BM/R. Coupland 7/6/36) s m out rica and Australiadisappointment that th" L _ . Although one of the electors expressed

, ey must De COntent w'th d bes •was Indeed chosen-al h h I secon - t, Radcliffe-Brown(BM t oug apparemly b IPL: RC/BM 7/31136' E . y a C osc vote over Evans-PritchardB ' vans-Pmchard 1973) Lrown wrote Malinow k" ( . ater that year Radcliffe-"0 B s I a nore now in th . c 'ear TOnia"and signed"R ") h '. e more Imormal 19305, addressedf d ex t anktng Mal' ki' h'orwar to a cominuin I " Inows Tor ISeffortS,looking

Ir g Cosc assoClanon and' d' ,pans ror Oxford anrhro I h ,In Icatlng that in formulating

R-B/BM 12/10/36). po ogy, e would first seek Malinowski's advice (BMPL:

TowardaNt IS'aura clence of S 'OCletyBy.the ti~e he returned to England' 19retleal otlentation had d m 37, however, Radcliffe-Brown's thco-£ h' d' un ergone change h bocus IS Ifferences with M I' k' Stat rought more sharply inw

a mows I Nod b h" ou t t e matter may be regarded

.... it ,

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY m

merely as the highlighting of tendencies present in his work from the begin-ning, as he left the Andaman materials behind and became more and moreinvolved in problems of Australian social structure-a view we may assumehe himself would have taken, insofar as he acknowledged change in his in-tellectual viewpoint. But the changes also reflect the oppositional contextsin which he found himself: not only his incipient opposition to Malinowski,but also his debates in the 1920s with the diffusionist heirs to Rivers' studyof kinship, and later with American social scientists, who sometimes accom-modated to the functionalist revolution by reducing functionalism to the psy-chological inregrarionalisr view of culture that had emerged in this period inAmerican anthropology (Stocking 1976a).

In this context, some of the changes do seem to some extent to be simplyrenamings-as when in lieu of extensive rewriting, Radcliffe-Brown proposedthat the word "sociology" be used in the second edition of The Andaman Is-landers where the word "psychology" had appeared in the first (CUPA R-B/

Roberts 9/14/32). But in addition to this terminological suppression of cer-tain conceptual motifs-which might not be a trivial matter for someone whocame to weigh so heavily the problem of precise terminology in the socialsciences-there is.evidence of a certain receptivity ro new influences as welLThe net result of all this was that by 1937, Radcliffe-Brown's anthropologycould no longer appropriately be described as a "functionalist psychology of

culture."The matter goes perhaps somewhat deeper than the development noted

by Meyer Fortes, who emphasized a vacillation (eventually resolved in favorof the latter) between a Durkheimian "functionalist" and a more strictly Ustruc-turalist" approach-the one seeing the systemic character of social institutionsin "external" terms as an adaptation to particular environments, the otherseeing it in "internal" or Ugenotypical" terms as the reflection of particular fac-tors inherent in each system (Fortes 1969a:45). However, Radcliffe-Brown's earlyinvolvement in the Udyadic paradigm" and the reflections of "extensionist" as-sumption in his paper on ''The Marher's Brother in South Africa" (1924) were,at the time, more than simply intellectual "survivals"; the extant notes fromhis Cape Town lectures indicate that he did indeed see social organizationbased on kinship as an extension ourward of the principles of behavior gov-erning the various dyadic units in the nuclear family (Schapera n.d.). It wouldseem to be in the context of his movement away from Rivers, his rejection ofFreud, his increasing differentiation from Malinowski-who assailed "kinshipalgebra" from an ontogenetic, extensionist perspective-and not merely as aninternal development governed by the requirements of his Australian data,or the logic of his thought, that he dropped his extensionis( vocabulary forthat of "structural principle" by the time he published "The Social Organisationof Australian Tribes" (193Ib; d. Evans-Pritchard 1929; Needham 1962:30-37).

•

........ iF

112 RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 173GEORGE W. SrocKING, JR.

And as Fortes' argume t i f:hei fu . _ n In act suggests, the movement from a more Durk-ermran nctionalism which was sdll I" ddress of 1931 ' . I. a tve an well in the centenary ad-

turalism" of ~~~te m;9"30scharactenstlcally Radcliffe-Brownian "social srruc-ater , seems to have taken pi duri h' Chiyears It seems lik I h . ace urlOg IS rrago

. ley t at It was there in the h G "tellectual milieu of Chi .' somew at more ermamc m-S hI' tcago sociology and the close proximity of the LawH~n~y ~h~t ~adch.ffe-.Brown first felt the direct inrellecrual influence of Sir

arne m a slgnificanr wa M' ,th b . £. y. arne s concept of "corporancn" providede asts lor a view of rh . divid I'1935b'37)' e m IVI ua m more clearly structural terms (RB

~semi~en't~tne ~suspe~ts~hat it is in this context that his emphasis shifted fromo sanction as the pi' r.while the exact timin f h . r mary rem orcem~m of social cohesion. And

pbv is perhaps a g.o t e mfluences of Russelltan mathematical philoso-Adler the Arist ~~t ISS~~,it seems likely that his exchanges with Mortimerrefug: in the La: e~:~:'ll ~:pher for ~ho~ President Hutchins had found1968; Stocking 1979). ' ghrened Its salience (cf. Singer 1973; Stanner

It was, in any case, Mortime Adl ' '.the Social Science 0- ,. , r. er s suggesuon-m a Dean's Seminar in

ivrsron, In which rh .....both .. _.J h Iwas the only hu ' hi -, parncsparecr-« at psycho ogyman sCience w ich tl

elaborate his own rh . I' .apparen y provoked Radcliffe-Brown toeorenca views En a philo h' I h <seminar of 1937, Althou h he' sop lea COntext in is rarnous

"SOCialCooptation" by hg h i dc~~tlnued to be interested in the processes of

w IC In ividual behavl h hstandardized with' . , avtor, r oug r, and emotion werelo a given SOCialgro hthat there was ~o I h . up, e was now at some pains to arguen y one t eoretlcal nat I' f - '

was ~in no sense~ a psychol (193. ura science 0 soclety,~ and that It

the analytic utility of Oogykh' ~.110). And although he continued to asserta ur elmlan c . ffunecessary-after having d b d A . onceptlon 0 netion, he now felt it

_ e ate mencan anth I' h bo hIn person and in print-t . . ropo ogISts on t e concept t"r 0 mSlst that he had ~ I'd" 'runctionalist" (R-B 1935 ,394. never c alme the appellatlonparently at the urging of~;s Chi:~ 1949; Stocking 1978b). Furthermore-ap-hIs persistence in talking of a ~C go srud~nt Fn:d Eggan, who suggested thatscured the difference b h.omparatlve SCience of Culture~ simply ob-h s etween 1m and A' Ie now insisted that th I mencan cu tural anthropologists-

erecoudben ~. fno bounded phenom I' 0 SCience 0 culture,~ because there wash h

ena entity to which It at t e system of m' d cu ture corresponded in the wayfIn was Contained - h' h 'o society was Cont~,'n"d 'h' Wit lo t e human body and the systemfa ... Wit mat . 'II 00c. Eggan 1971; Tax 1978) erntona y unded community (1937:106-7;

Having completed th I'R d la B e ongrefinementofh' ~ I' '.a Clue- rown was b IS narura science of socIety,b f I I now fOught for th fi . .e air y c osc permanent I ' e rst tlme lOto what promised to"co I . re atlonship with h' I 'I hvo utlon in anthro I "(J' IS ong-tlme co laborator in t e

. d - po ogy arVle 1964) G'pIe an mdependent d . . Iven the fact that he now occu-an potentially com .. . .petltlVe poSition in the same general

institutional framework, it is not surprising that intellectual controversy be-tween the two quickly flared up again.

From "Pure" to "Hyphenated" Functionalism

In January 1938, Radcliffe-Brown attacked a book for which Malinowski hadwritten a laudatory preface, calling it "another of those monuments of mud-died thinking that are occasionally but still toO frequently erected in the nameof anthropology" (1938). Malinowski indicated that he was drafting a reply"all in the same Blood and Thunder manner in which we conduct our printedcorrespondence," and that this time he was going to "make a real villain" ofRadcliffe-Brown (BMPL: BM/R-B 1/29/38), Instead, however, he proposed(through a third party, in the manner of a duel) that they hold a public discus-sion of the issues between them, As challenged party, Radcliffe-Brown chosethe topic "the use of the concept 'function' in sociology"; and at Malinowski'ssuggestion, he opened the discussion on June 17, 1938, at Le Play House witha formal statement of his position (BMPL H. Clark/BM 4/22/38; BM/HC5/5/38), Although its substance survives only in Radcliffe-Brawn's typed sum-mary of the thirteen propositions he would defend and in extensive notesMalinowski prepared for his rejoinder, it seems clear that this time the out-

come was not a "love-Fest."Radcliffe-Brown began by arguing that cooperative work in science de-

pended on acceptance of a common terminology, which made it ~essentialto give precise unambiguous definitions of all technical terms." In scientificusage, the term function had tWOprecise bur distinct meanings: physiologicalfunction referred to the contribution an organ made "by its activity to thepersistence of the organic structure"; mathematical function, to expressionsin which the substitution of a specific value for a variable term would givea value for the expression as a whole. By a process of degradation, each sci-entific usage had in popular speech a corresponding ~imprecise" meani~g:_ on~equivalent to ~activity" or ~effect"; the other, to "any relation of covanatlon.Radcliffe-Brown proposed to use the term "social function" in a sense analo-gous to the scientific conception of physiological function, as the contribu-tion any usage or belief made ~to the persistence of the total complex of soci~1reactions [sic-relations!] which constitute the social structure of that SOCI-ety." Appealing to Hsun Tze, Monresquieu, Saint-Simon, and Ourkheim, hemade a point of "deprecating" the recent usage referring to "any and every

I' 'd f" " d" tpo,,·re aClon of interdependence," or simply to the I ea 0 use an pu .

6 ' . 'd R d '" B wn is ba>ed primarily. ThIs aCCOuntof the debate between Malmowskl an a CULe·roon materials preserved in BMPY, Series II, Box 12, folder 34.

...... «

174RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISHSOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 175

..III

GEORGE W STocKlNO, JR.

Responding in a "semi-serious semi . I ...as the "humble craftsman" f fun . I-l~u ar vern, Malinowski cast himselfcaped "High Priest" exo n . ~ dncnonahsm. against Radcliffe-Brown's black-

rcising emons with bl k . cboth of them were fun n I'. ac magic formuli. In truth. c lona ISts With mino di . . 'm the "scientific analysis f \ . r rvergencres, shanng a belief. ~ a actua reahty" as ~_..1 •gins or history' both of th opposed to speculation on on-

f' em were committed h h'"a CUltural process". both . to r e searc lor general laws

I,were conVinced th "h .

.w~re] one integral subject of stud ." Th at uman SOCiety a~d cultureInsisted on embellishing hi c. y .. e trouble was that Radchffe-Brown" b IS line empirical wo k . h " "ver alar scholastic" def "" H r Wit a Window dressing" of

ninons. e spoke f· 'fone, whereas the essenra f " ifi d 0 science as I all science wered . a SClentl c efi .. h

erived from the reality a . I . muon was r at concepts should beRidiculing the derivan pafrttc~ ar science studies empirically.

Ion 0 SOCiological bogy, Malinowski suggest d h concepts y analogy from physiol-. e t ere was a sense . hi h "an organism with MG 1M "0. in w rc the debate Itself was

"\.' orns Insbe 1)" h dR-Its rver, and the audie . be rg. Its ea. -B Its brain, he himself.. , nee us wels B h .no science can live perm I . ur w arever their short-run utility,

'" anent yon anal . ». d h -With the collective soul") h d I . ogIes. an t e organic analogy (alongDeriding Radcliffe-Brown' "a ~ng .sInce been found wanting in sociology.f "d" s puntarusm of p , - - "or a lcttonaryofhomo h " , flm preclSlon. polishing words

" d" p ones, Malmo k" . edqUire turning to facts add I' ws I tnSISt that true precision re-bedrock reality." Fo h' n h eve o.plng your concepts always in touch withh rim, t at reality w \ d -s own that culture was" as revea e 10 fieldwork, which had_ . , nor a scrap-heap" " _Slstmg organism" b '. ' not an evolVing or soilless a 'pet-, ut an actlve Int ti d

In this Context M I" k'. egrn ve, a aptive. and instrumental proc""-Rd' ' a tnows -I defiantl b

a cliffe-Brown had co d d . y em raced the looseness of usagefour different levels of m

ne~ne£. argUIng that fieldwork had in fact revealed

" h R eanIng lor the co fuWIt adcliffe-Brown's fo ncept nction. correlating roughly"f \' ur usages: use a d ·1'1 you lke, Co-variation") th . f: . n Uti Ity, mutual dependence ("orman organism," and the 'satefsatl~ actlo

fn of "the biological needs of the hu-

t "All' ISaction 0 "d . d ""Ives. thIngs considered h d'lI enve needs or cultural impera-much" ·f . ,t e Illerence bet h

, I In Radcliffe-Brown' d fi . . ween t em was really "not veryor "p" s e nmon one g\ d " -urpose and replaced" . osse contnbution" as "use~th' persistence" by'" Iat perSistence was "a mo I' Integra working" (on the groundsand blood human beings rta ts~ue"~.All that Malinowski did was add "flesh

This "small" differen,e 0 t e hS adow of 'purely social system ,,,Id ~pera .wou allow. Although the ps more consequential than Malinowski

h ycameb"s ared the bias toward conc ~ It In rather different ways, both menthe B .. h rete expenence h .nns anthropological t d" t at IScommonly associated withski, this concretism expresse;.m~t (cf. Lombard 197Z:1l3). With Malinow-vation. Although for him ab Itse. at a level closer to that of actual obser-

stractlon enter d he t e process by which data were

constituted out of the undifferentiated experience of the field observer, it wascontained within a circuit that began and ended in the behavior of livinghuman beings he had experienced in the field.

The same empiricist heritage was manifest in Radcliffe-Brawn's insistencethat social (in contrast to cultural) systems were "real," "concrete" phenomena(1940a:190; d. Tax er al., eds. 1953:153). However, converted earlv on to Durk-heim and touched at some point by the philosophical notions of Whiteheadand Russell, Radcliffe-Brown insisted on the methodological necessity of ab-stracting typical relationships of structure from the phenomenal reality in whichthey were embedded, and of distinguishing between different kinds of abstrac-tion from reality. And for him, abstraction moved always away from observa-tion toward the formulation of general social laws. From this point of view,the most revealing passage of the debate is perhaps a marginal annotationMalinowski offered to the tenth point of Radcliffe-Brown's outline. There,Radcliffe-Brown had suggested that "the social function of a usage or beliefis to be discovered by examining its effects." While these were in the first in-stance effects upon individuals, it was "only the effects upon the social rela-tions of the individual with other individuals that constitute the social func-tion," To which Malinowski had commented in the margin, "To me the dis-

tinction is not relevant."The relevance of the distinction was not, however, so easily denied. Each

man returned to it in print during the following year. In an article on "TheGroup and the Individual in Functional Analysis" published while he wason sabbatical leave in the United States, Malinowski made a point of distin-guishing "plain and pure" from "hyphenated" functionalism, insisting at somelength on the priority of the biological individual "both in social the"ory an~,in the reality of cultural life" (1939:243). And in his Frazer Lecture on Taboo,Radcliffe-Brown attacked Malinowski's derivation of magic from individualpsychological need, arguing that ritual could as well cause as alleviate anxi-ety, and insisting at some length on the social function (as opposed to thepsychological effects) of ritual activity (R-B 1939). Although the argument wassimilar in its essentials to that advanced in The Andaman Islanders, it is worth

, [ ". ts" In a sensenoting that there was no longer any relerence to senttmen . 'Radcliffe-Brown's article the following year "On Joking Relationships" carriedthe argument one step further, by showing that what seemed .manifestly tobe individual "psychological" phenomena were in fact expreSSIOns of strUC-

tural relationship (1940b). .Apparently, this exchange marks the last direct expression of theIr own

joking relationship. Caught in the United States by the outbreak of Euro-pean war, Malinowski died there in 1942, leaving Radcliffe-Brown alone asthe surviving resident elder of British social anthropology.

176 RADCLiFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 177GEORGE W. STocIUN'G., la.

The Transition' P al,m erson Institutionaland Disciplinary Perspecrive '

As Audrey Richards was to note the -a personal one" (1957-27)- nd' reacnon against Malinowski was-panly, h h . a even an ou "..1_, I -WIt t e amhropolntrie • ed UJuer.s imired personal conracr

cgtsts tram beew hanecdote. Without reduct cfme r eowars offers pknry of confirming

mg ISSues method nd hstatus, one can scarcely ru fro h. a meorv to epiphenomenalrn m rne chiaCCOUnt without some n y personal materials of the presentI Comment on this of h ..n modes appropriate to rh '. II especr t e cransmoa.

Radcliffe-Brown were both ',nde.lr'dlnle._et:tual temperaments, MaJinowski andti d IVI uats who '_..1Ion an repulsion. Although he' kl Insphal ~rong feelings of aurae-man, and enjoyed OC......~; I L~ ngly spokr of himself as a Polish noble-h casiona weekeods ht e upper classes M I' . att ecountryhornesoffriendsamong

, h ' a mowskl was an hIn c e penumbra of an rei eart y man, who enveloped srudentssomewhat as he came to ;eet~.t ego: ~lthough hIS style may have changedto have been provocative] IS ~I_tlon under aneck in the 19JOs, he seemsPowd k y pemussrve in in II I - -erma er felt that h h te ecura meeracecn. Hortenseall right to argue with ~i;t e

ldemanded was loyalty, not reverence; it was

42-43). This was pe,ha~ I so ong as you were dearly 'en his side- (1966:...~ ess preble .. hwas post-Riversian diffu" malic in t e 19205 when the 'orher side"

wo ~ Slonlsm and h. men,. Or whom contempornr' . per aps also ~Mrally in the case ofinteraction, Ironically ho Y'<><h lalstandards sustained a more de .....ndent

h,weVerte ., (h ~

seems to ave elicited . . ' cntlc 0 t e universal oedipus complexThe bl rejection on the (pro em became . parte a numbeTofhismalesrudenr.s.from . h - more senous as h cb Wit In the lineage of .] e came to leel his position threatened

ecame involved in rather~ b,a anthropology, and in the middle 19305 hethe auth h' Itter Controve . h h£ ors Ip of ideas th h d L_. rsy WIt t rtt male students overlormams I at a ueen disc _.. J - h-' I 'dater spoke of th "b U::>:ICU m IS semmars. Severa In-evelop I e teak" with M I' . -'menta phase (Fa I a mowskl as If If were a regular

Although he was k ttes 969b; Gluckman 1969; Schapem 1969)_adopted nOwn to enrertai . .

h. a more democrati I' n parties With Andaman dances, and

up Ism I CStyelnth U -edSonce e and ca......) R d I't! e nit tates {where he soon gavea certain . ...~, a C Ie-Bra J, h emotIOnal distanc d d wn seems nonnally to have mainraineuWit mesm . e an etach Bu(F

' h ensm suggest he Id ment. t as his early experimentslrt 1956) G I ,cou cast II

t" ,a vanizing 'm II a spe on those who were susceptibleIVeIntellect h' a groups b h d' '£ ,e ehcited if h dOd y t e lteet verbal force of authOrlra-

tant lor h' e I notd d"be

. 1m was not the ~~ (eman diSCIpleship. What \\'as impor'qUite c I ""Utee 0 pa t' I,d

Iasua -bur rath . r ICU ar Ideas-about which he caul

n Contra t M er commltms to alinowski h ent to ;1 systematic analytic viewpoint,seems to h b • W 0 attra d. aVe een predom' I ere students of both sexes his appealsIan seem h ln3nt Yto 'to ave been those ( men; and in his case the forces of repul-

o exdusio hn mt er than expulsion. Those who

did not enter his charmed intellectual circle, or who were pushed outside ofit, found much to criticize in Radcliffe-Brawn's somewhat mannered and con-descending Edwardian style; bur with one notable exception, those who en-tered it did not find it necessary to make a "break" with him (Evans-Pritchard

1973),Their failure to do so, however, may reflect not only differences in the dy-

namics of personal interaction, but also the way these articulated with theevolving institutional structure of British anthropology. By the time Radcliffe-Brown returned to England in 1937, these "breaks" with Malinowski had al-ready taken place; and even if interpersonal dynamics had made repetitionmore likely, the external institutional context made it less necessary. The ex-asperating dependence enforced by the career-market of the depression wasbeginning to come to an end. With the phasing out of Rockefeller anthropol-ogy in 1937, Malinowski's patronage was cuttailed, and already in 1938 an-thropological work outside his institutional orbit had begun to open up slightly,with the founding of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and a small expansionof anthropological work in British and colonial universities (Brown 1973).Withthe coming of the war, the younger anthropologists were off to war-relatedwork, and within a year of its conclusion, Radcliffe-Brown had reached retire-menr age. While Evans-Pritchard as his immediate successot felt perhaps aspecial need to assert his own individual genius, the test of that generation,riding on a wave of university expansion, requited no intellectual confron-tation to establish themselves institutionally. Although by the early 1950sthe Radcliffe-Browninan moment was already waning, it was not until afterhis death that a more general theoretical teaction began,

That the relations of individuals in small groups should playa decisive rolein the diffusion and institutionalization of intellectual innovations is scarcelysurprising, in view of the literature in the sociology of science on "invisiblecolleges" and "solidarity groups" (Mulkay 1977). Insofar as the diffusion ofintellectual innovations depends on the activities of charismatic individualsfocussing the energies of small groups of disciples' to exploit restricted institu-tional resources, one may anticipate departures from the norm of collegialityimplicit in the idea of "invisible college." This is especially likely insofar asthe relations of charismatic innovator to disciple are inherently asymmetric-al, and likely to be charged with the psychological overtones accompanyingOther types of authority relations. In the early stages of the development ofa discipline or area of inquiry, as well as in the intimate process of the I~terreproduction of personnel, it seems likely that such interacti-:e groupS ml.ghtevidence the psychodynamics of kinship groups-not simply In the Radchffe-Brownian style of intellectual lineages, but in the more Malinowskian stYleof intellectual families (d. Campbell 1979).

But if the earlier transition from "pure" to "hyphenated" functionalism may

178 RADCLlfFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 179GEORGE W. STocKING, JR.

be illuminated b [ . ..ing institurional sr- acmg It In a context of personal imeracrion within evolv-

.. s ructures one may I . h h .ternal' disciplinary d oami Th a so ~lewtee ~nge In terms of an "in-anrhropolo I Y rc. e succession of dominance in British social

gy was a so a movement from an inquiry d fi ed . "I·of its observational m thod len pnman y In termsretical presuPpositionse A a ogy ~oone defined equally in terms of its rheo-pology alternated bet' 5many 0 lservers have noted, Malinowskian anthro-

ween two po es: one of detailed .. I banother in which Trobr: d " ernpmca 0 servarion,nan savages" were used ro i lid hries of late nineteenth and earl . 0 mva I ate t e grand then-date his own late fu . . y rwentierh century social science, or to vali-55) Thl r n~tlonahst metatheory (Leach 1957:119' d. Panoff 19n, IS was appropriate, perhaps to a I h f· ' .

anthropology" wh h ' . near y p ase 0 the revolution in, en w at was required h discredithe popularization of th . was rne crscrecnnng of the old and

I" new point of view B t h M I· k·' kwas later subjected to I " u w en a mows IS wor

genera reevaluation by rh eedi .British anthropologists (Firth d 1957 e succ mg generanon ofreedy on the impasse that M'a~i . .>' several.com~ented directly or indi-middle 1930s His con iburt nowskian functionalism had reached in the

. trI unon to the dev I f hwas not then at issue d here I I" opment 0 et nographic method,an t ere IS ample indi . . h·with students in the f ld h M ' .canon 10 IS correspondence

I" t at ahnowskian fu . I' " ked" .sense that it facilitated the II ' ncrrona Ism wor eel In the1983a). But in some ca coblectlon of large amounts of data (cf Stocking

hses pro ems seem to h . h

t esizing the material As Pi h I ave ansen w en it came w syn·I d

. 1ft ater posed the "If h··ate to everything e1 h d matter: everyt 109 IS re-Malinowski's own gS;,w

d'" hoe~ the description swpr (Kuper 1973:94),

an synt etle effort wh' h d· d .progress in the seminar f hi' Ie was ISCUSse as work-lO-B sot I" ear y 1930s p 'd d .ut although Coral Gardens nd he' '. rovI, I" In some ways a model.the "furthest limitn b aft ITMagiC earned "institutional study» to

y means a "correlati f· ..whole," it was not a m d I 'I" ng one set 0 actlvltles" with "the..' 0 e eaSI y Imitated As A d Ri h dIt was a toUT de force but' . u rey c ards suggeste ,

, It was not practical r'mem" (1957:27-28), po ItiCSto repeat such an experi-

?thers would not have repeated the .Wnting to Malinowski in the fall of 1935expenment even if it were expedient,eral dissatisfaction with h' ,Gregory Bateson announced a gen-

IS approach: "Wh "complete deHneation of II h f ere you emphaSize the need forI h

at I" actors relev Iemp asize the need to c 'd h ant to a tata cultural situation,. f onsl er t ese fact 'action 0 the same facto' h ors one at a time, comparing the

r maw ole series ofgranting that the two ap h' separate situations." Although!' , proac es might each be I'd" hImItations," Bateson neve th I r. I va I wit in their respectivedie out of which simplQ r, I" e,ssfiI" t that Malinowski's was "a hopeless mud-G '- SClentl c gene I' ,BIBM n.d. [October 1935]) Re d' fa IzatlOns can never come~ (BMPL:had looked for the word "I " "a 109 Coral Gardens in this context, Bateson

oglC as applied to Trobriand culture and found

ncr a single instance (BMPL GB/BM 1/16/36), What he wanted was to dis-sect the monograph, and rearrange its rich materials to show "nor the wholeof the mechanism but rather the working of each isolable sociological andpsychological law" (BMPL GB/BM 11/5/35; cf. Bateson 1936).Although Bateson's case-and Firth's in We, the Tikopia (1936)-suggests

that it was not simply a matter of a viable Oceanic functionalism runningaground in Africa, this shift in ethnographic focus was perhaps a factor inthe theoretical transition. If the problem of abstraction was felt even by stu-dents of small and bounded Oceanic societies, it was likely to be more stronglyfelt by those dealing with the larger, more complex, and loosely marginedsocieties of Africa-particularly when the focus was on problems of culturecontact. At the conclusion of the African Institute's five-year plan for the studyof culture change, Malinowski himself seems to have been less than fully sat-isfied with the results of studies carried on where the "main presuppositionsof functionalism in its simple form break down" (1938:xxxvi).As several writers have suggested, what Radcliffe-Brown offered intellectu-

ally at this point was a theoretical orientation that made it easier to distin-guish between generalized empirical connection and specific analytical rele-vance (Kuper 1973:94). By focussing on particular types of social relations thatcould be abstracted from a given body of ethnographic data, it not only pro-vided a framework for ordering otherwise less tractable material, but seemedto hold forth the promise of systematic comparative study, It represented afurther narrowing of anthropological attention, which for Malinowski as forRadcliffe-Brown had already excluded the concern with material culture andracial type~somcwhat to the consternation of ethnological traditionalists likeSeligman and Haddon, But it was an approach that must have seemed espe-cially attractive to students who had suffered the frustrations of"conract" studiescarried on in the looser Malinowskian functional mode-and had then beencriticizcd by the master in his volume preface (8M 1938).1n this context, Radcliffe-Brawn's thinking clearly had an impact beyond

the small group ta whom he explicated the nmions of "system" and "strUC-ture» in his rooms in All Souls during the last months before the outbreakof the Second World War (Gluckman 1969), Reiterated at their request in thefirst of two successive presidential addresses to the Royal Anthropological In-stitute (R-B 19403; 1941), it provided the essential analytic underpinmng,forthe two major cooperative efforts of the Radcliffe-Brownian mode: Afnc.anPolitical Systems (Fortes & Evans-Pritchard, ecls. 1940)-four of whose contrib-utors had been included in Malinowski's culture contact volume- and AI-rimn Systems of Kinship and Marriage (Radcliffe-Brown & Forde, cds. 1~50),Although both were published by the International African Institute, neither

Contained a single reference to Malinowski.

180 GEORGE W. SrOCKING, JR.

Institute of Social A rh -1945-46 Lei' n TOpology, University of Oxford Prof

. ! to nglu, [ronl row; K T Hadr . . A. R Radcliffe·Brown', classRadcliffe.Brown, Meyer Fortes {~d l~~~)ou, Phyllis Puckle (secretary and librarian) A. R.ell,J.W.Brailsford A A I M Ner, - ,K.A.Busia;baekIt>W:L EH' W'N, . . ssa, . . Srinivas (c . .. enrlques, . l'W'

Ourte;y of the In,dtute of Social Amhropology).

The Radcliffe.Brownian Min Broader H" omenttstorical Perspective

A decade and a half after Radcliffe-Brown's .of the postwar generation look" b k death, If seemed to one memberish anthropology "such that f~~g ae. that changes had taken place in Brit-useful, no longer are' mono h pmhe.tlcal purposes textbooks which looked1 '. ,grap sw ich used

se ective, Interpretations whi h I to appear exhaustive now seemcal and lifeless." Such im c °InIce ooked full of insight now seem mechani-dind ages ca up once . han tn eed the "new anth I" again t e metaphor of paradigm" ropo ogy -ettl! h h' 'a structuralism" tout court yp enated In authorship but nowI

v , -was seen a di 'terno ogical break" (Ardener 1971'449) Bued I~g on the other side of an "epis-no new paradigm swept rh f Id. de lit despIte the influence of Levi-Strauss

. e ne aecadlt h 'as a time when grand rh "I di e a er, t e same writer saw the 1970seorenca In ( 'h"parade) had died off "sudd I osaurs Wit structuralism" leading the

. en y together" I' "scurrYing over the anthro I . I ,eaVIng only small furry mammals"po oglca ground (Ardener 1983) 0 'h'. ne mig t vIew

RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 181

the 1970s as a decade of "institutional stagnation, intellectual torpor, andparochialism" (Kuper 1983:192), or as an "intellectual cocktail" from whichsomething "highly combustible" might yet distill. What, from "one temporalvantage point," seemed "a decline from a golden age" could in the long runbe "interpreted as transition to a new one" (Ellen 1983). But if theoretical co-herence might be regained at some future point, [here was clearly a sense ofparadigm lost; from either perspective, the Radcliffe-Brownian moment seemed

a thing of the past.lr is worth noting that its distancing was reflected in the heightened rele-

vance of many of the issues in the Murdock/Firth exchange. By 1980, Afri-can ethnography had significantly declined in importance, particularly amongyounger anthropologists, for whom problems of ritual, symbolism, and classifi-cation were more salient than those of social organization, If anthropology andpsychology remained somewhat distanced, there had been a definite "shift to-ward a more 'cultural' anthropology" -though the term itself still for some re-quired quotationa] marking (Kuper 1983:190). There had also been a ooticeablerapprochement with history, and [here was a significant interest in problemsof cultural change and development (Ellen 1983).The problem of the generaliza-bility of "African models" had been a concern throughout the period (Barnes1962; Coho 1977), which can be seen also as unified by a concern with theproblems of"reification" and "variation." While there was still talk of~parochial-ism," and the impact of Marxist influences was a matter of debate, the varietyof those dying dinosaurs and scurrying mammals could be seen as evidencefor broadening anthropological vistas as well as for theoretical disarray.But if even from [his unstable vantage point, the Radcliffe-Brownian mo-

ment seemed still to stand on the other side of a divide, the transition ofthe 1930s seemed now much less sharply marked. From the perspective ofmany posrrupture critics, Malinowskian fieldwork and Radcliffe-Browniantypologizing were simply two phases of the same empiricist butterfly collec-tion (Ardener 1971:450; d. Leach 1961:2); both represented the same, now-

discredited "positivist" point of view.Indeed, there are many today (especially, perhaps, in the United States)

for whom the real problem for historical understanding would seem now tobe: how could so many intelligent anthropologists have been so long infectedby such a sterile and/or derivative viewpoint? Without accepting the charac-terization, the question demands serious consideration, as an instantiationof a fundamental problem ofiotellecrual history-one which, in cross-culturalh

' f 'I' h I gists' ex-rat er than trans-temporal situations, is qUite arm tar to ant ropo 0 .

plaioing how it is [hat people can believe what seems from another p~rspec-, 'f' oon bvtlve manifestly "foolish." Savoring the wonderful Irony 0 Its propaga 1.

an expatriate Pole and a self-exiled Francophile-not to mention the dlv.e~seorigins of many of their disciples-it is tempting to refer the matter to Bnush

182 RADCLIffE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 183GEORGE W. SrocKING, JR.

intellectual character. Given Malinowski's roche .. .glicieation after World War I d h r self-conscious intellectual an-liarly English reading ofD rkh .w rh some would call Raddiffe-Brown's pecu-

UT elm t ere may be hiirony would allow. Certainly he i 11 1 more ro t IS suggestion thanogy has been recurrently aff:C:e~;te[h~~a cha~~ter of British enrhropol-models and their dom ..sricart r d ppropnanon of French rationalist'-~ cation to a eeply ed .. 1 ..end, the historian ofvrh od 8 . . root ernpmca tradition. In the

em ern rirish sch I~ 1 d h "ogy has little to do . h d h 00 cone u es [ at anthropol-" Wit gran theory," and d Cregional structural com . • b d' comes own lour square for a

panson ase upon th -fu . I·that have been "the d" . C e ncnona 1Stfield studies"... rsnncnve rearure of od 8 ..1983:204-5)- . ill ern rirish anthropology" (Kupera program m some res . -I ,..~Brown altered in the 1930 Q' ~ts Simi ar to the one that Radcliffe-

s. urte 81;1defrom . I hcolleague Marshall Sahli Id have i nanona c aracrer, or-as my." ms wou ave it a hed I .utilitarian assumption rhi h ,n enrrenc ell rural bias toward

- ISessay as perh dthe problem. And despir h ' aps suggesre other approaches to. I I' t I' attention give t h fnsrna, or career conside t" '" n 0 sue actors as personal chaoit should be clear rh t ra Ions. within a particular institutional framework,.f a my own mterpretarlon gj b .CI cellv cognitive facto W. h . n gives su sranrial weight to spe-Irs. It OUt argum th hi .ess theoretical sense "" " " g at t ISVIewpoint is in some time-h

...orrect, It seems hidt I' context of the alee . . . nonet I' ess un erstandable that, in

R. ernattve viewpoints ff; . I .

adchffe-Brownian strucr I funcn I' ecnve y available at the time,c ura - ncnonalt edtool of considerable po Ism seem to many an intellectualwer.

There can be no question now of reenter! .a large input of Mal',no k' tenng the perIod that (allowing for" ws Ian romant" ) . hIn British social anth I IClsm mig t be called the "classical era"

k dropo ogy, From across· 'bmar I' more by decolo' . an IrreverSI Ie historical divide

. nlzatlon than b h '. ..10 the guise of "method I . I y t I' rejection of positivism" -which

o oglca pragm . • ·11 '198J:204)-the best w d' atlsm Stl has its attrncrions {Kuperh

ecanolstryto '"c aracter. appreciate ItS dIstinctive historical

!he problem is complicated b h .eaSily mixable metapho, f I" y t I' multiple perspectives suggested by the

so Ineage and d'tween what one '"""reep,;v h". para Igm, and by the difference be-" h ....... I' IStOflan ofB .( h ht earll'S" and his "views" (8 fl IS ant ropology has called a man'sfi d . urrow 1966·32) & .n In The Natural Scien f Soc' '. trospeCtive!y, it is possible to

b Ice DIety the d· f

sym 0 s. (.c~.Singer 1973), Similar! I .groun 109 or .a. study of culturalrehlstonClzmg impulse a fi y, ookmg back to legitimate the present8' . ' ne can nd an h' . I·out fltish social anth I ( " lstoflca Interest running through-

I . I ropo ogy leWIS 1984) Ifo oglca caveats, it is quit 'bl . we attend to all the method-h ··1 I' POSSI I' to sho h R d 1·/1t I' PflVI eging of synchro. I' w t at a c Ie-Brown regardedh h me ana YSlsas· It at w at he opposed " sImp y a methodological strategy andbl' was not real" b " . 'nor md us, however to h . lit conjectural" history. This should

. h ' w at was gOI . htlet century-which is wh h ng on In t I' first decades of the twen-

P d fen t every" I d· .repare (c. Kuper 1973). a ISJunCture of 1922 was being

British anthropology in the late nineteenth century mav be regarded asa pre-Freudian science of the irrational-vthe polar complement of politicaleconomy, which was the science of the characteristic rational behavior of civi-lized men. A critical role in this science of the irrational was played by thedoctrine of survivals, which (aside from the enveloping assumptional frame-work of biological evolutionism) is perhaps the specific assumption most sharplydifferentiating nineteenth-<entury progressive developmentalism from earliermanifestations of the same viewpoint (Hodgen 1936).1£the comparative methodwas the major ordering principle of cultural evolutionism, then the doctrineof survivals was its key interpretive principle. Presented with an array of in-explicable, irrational beliefs and customs in the recorded accounts of present-day "savages," the armchair anrhropologist-archetypically, Frazer-could givethem rational meaning through the built-in rationalistic utilitarianism of thedoctrine of survivals: what made no rational sense in the present was per-fectly understandable as the sheer inertial persistence of the imperfectly ra-tional pursuit of utility in an earlier stage .The present essay casts only incidental light on why, in the decade after

1900, this approach should have begun to seem unsatisfactory to some an-thropologists, why there should have been such a widespread sense of theinadequacy of theoretical categories to empirical data (d. Stocking 1983a),One is inclined to suggest that the question, "Why do they do this crazy thing?"seemed more obviously presumptuous when carried to the field than whenasked from the armchair. But the new functionalism was equally if not moreprivileging of the position of the anthropologist, since it assumed that he couldfind reason even where it had never in fact presented itself to the individualsavage consdousness, And in the case of Radcliffe-Brown, we are rather ledback to particular intellectual influences felt in the moment of paradigm cri-sis, influences that link anthropology to the more geneI<lI context of Euro-pean thought about "consciousness and society" (Hughes 1958). But in thiscase, the examination of su~viving correspondence leads us also to an appre-ciation of the paradigmatic centrality of the doctrine of survivals-not onlyfor Radcliffe-Brown in 1914, but also for the historian looking back from the

present,More generally, perhaps it may heighten our appreciation of what was in-

deed a major theoretical transition in the history of anthropology: the breakin the cycle of alternating diachronic paradigms that had characterized an-

h TI d h· ". . fant ropology up until the early twentieth century. \1' e IstonCizatlO

n0 -

thropological speculation was doubtless a complex phenomenon, It was alsohappening at about the same time in Malinowski, in a way that was at leastsuperficially even more thoroughgoing: the major point of theoretical differ-ence evident in his marginal notes to Radcliffe-Brawn's paper of 1923 was anunwillingness to gI<lm sepaI<lte but equal statuS to the methodS of ethnol~gy{BMSC, R-B 1923:127, 130)-which, we may note again in passing, in the United

184 GEORG£ W. STocKING, JR.

States also underwent dehisroricizarion during the interwar period (Stocking19763). Even so, when Radcliffe-Brown realizes in 1914 that he and Riversare talking past one another-that fundamental differences in methodologi-cal assumption make a continuation of their dispute fruidess-we feel our-selves present at the very moment of a rupture in the history of anthropology,If we now seek to recapture an hisrcrical perspective ....-ithin as well as uponthe discipline, it is from the orher side of this major historical intellectualdisjuncture.

Acknowledgments

This essay is a much-belated (and still partial) fruit of manuscript researchcarried out during two six-month visits (0 England: in 1969, when I was in-vited to Kings College, Cambridge, by Robert M. Young, who had organizeda seminar on the social study of the history of science, and again in 1973,when Iwas a visiter to the Department of Anthropology of the London Schoolof Economics. Iwould like to thank my hoses on both occasions, the reposi-tories and the archivists of the various manuscript materials consulted, andthe several agencies that funded that research: the Wenner-Gren Foundationfor Anthropological Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities,and the National Science Foundation. Versions of the first half of the essay,on Radcliffe-Brown and Rivers, were presented at the University of Sussexin 1973 and to several subsequent seminars on Radcliffe-Brown in the De-partment of Anthropology of the University of Chicago. The second half,on Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, was drafted at the Center for AdvancedStudy in the Behavioral Sciences during the academic year 1976-77 (wheremy stay was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities), andhas been presented since then to several different groups. Helpful comrnenrson all or part of the argument have been offered by Bernard Cohn, Ron-ald Cohen,]ohn Comaroff, Fred Eggan, Raymond Firth, Raymond Fogelson,Meyer Fortes, Marshall Sahlins, David Schneider, Milton Singer, MarilynSerarhem, Stanley Tambiah, and others who have been present at one oranother presentation. Although Ihave not cited all of them specifically, thisessay has benefitted from the extended reminiscences of a number of liv-ing and recently deceased British social anthropologists ~'ho knew Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski (including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Raymond Firth,Meyer Fortes, C. von Furer Heimendorf, Max Gluckman, Phyllis Kabery, ~~_mund Leach, Lucy Mair, Audrey Richards, Isaac Schapera, and M. N. Snm-vas), as well as from occasional conversational reminiscences from many others.I have p~fitted also from seminar papers by my students, including All~nBerger, LIsa Brusewicz, Tom Marett, Ed Martinek, Philip Stafford, and BillStamets. I am grateful to Peter Lloyd for access to early minutes of the Asso-

•

185B OWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGYRAOCLIFFE- R

. d to Richard Randolph for access toiation of Social Anthropologists, an . 1would like to express myCI , hi onal possession. ki MMalinowski reprints rn IS pers fR d lufe-Brown and Malinows i, rs.

h d ghters o a curr: .. gspecial appreciation to t e au Wa ne Malinowska, for their cont.mumCynthia Pike and Mrs. Helena y rial assistance has been proVided atcooperation and encouragementh Se~~tf h and Marian Lichtsceru Fund forvarious points with the help °hit De ~ Pent of Anthropology and the ~or-

I . IRe arch of r e epar m 'd MedlcmeAnthropo ogrca se d of the History of SCIence anris Fishbein Center for the Stu yof the University of Chicago.

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189RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

1931b. The social organisation of Australian tribes. Oceania Monogwph.s, no. l.1932, The Andaman islanders. 2d cd. Chicago.1933. Law, primitive. Ency. Soc. Sci~. 9:202-6.1935a. Primitive law. Man 35:47-48. ,

I I 1952:32-48.1935b. Patrilineal and matrilinea succes~lo,n. "' e Am. Amh. 37:394-404.1935c. On the concept of function in SOCIascience-

___ . 1937. A natural scence of society. Chicago (1956).___ . 1938. Motherhood in Australia. Man 38:14-15.__ . 1939. Taboo. In 1952:lJ3-52.

1940a, On social Structure. In 1952:188-204.___ . 1940b. On joking relationships. In 1952:9~-~04~89

194\. The study of kinship systems. In 19)2.49 8 411946 Note on functional anthropology. Man 46:3 - ,

. . . A Am Anth. 51:320-23.-- . 1949. FunCtlonahsm: protest. _ .', ' New York (1965).

1952. StrnctuTe and function In prmunve society. .. Chi.' ! eel M. N. Sriruvas. icago.

---. 1958. Method In ,OCUli anthropo ogy~ '/. f kinship and marriage.Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., & D. Forde, eds. 19,0. A nccn systems 0

London.RoB. See under Radcliffe-Brown.

RFA. See under Manuscript Sources. 'k" k In Firth, ed. 1957:f I in Mahnows 1 s wor .Richards, A. 1957. The concept 0 cu tore

15-31. . hod f [lecting sodal and vital statistics.Rivers, W. H. R. 1900. A genealogical met 0 co

1. Roy. Anth. Inn. 30:74-82.---. 1906. The Todas. London. of relationships. [n Anthro----. 1907, On the origin of the classificatorYB",;,,,m '309-23. Oxford.

B 'Fl ed N, a our et a., .pological essay, presented to E. . y or, . b 'd Expedition to Torres S(rall~, ed.___ . 1908. Genealogies. In Reports of the Cam rl ge

A. C. Haddon, 6:64-91. Cambridge: tuft' In 1926:120-40.1911. The ethnological analYSiS of cuI I~ 1926:190-210.1912a. The disappe~ranc~ o~ useful a7s. tho Folk-Lore 23;307-31.1912b. The sociologlCal slgmficllnce 0 my

. . ., Soc ReI! 6:293-305.~, 1913. SurVIval \[J SOCIO ogy. . . R . d T -ndon (1968).

I " eprm( e . L.AJ N B---. 19143. Kinship and socia orgamsan~n. 'd 1 vols. Osterhout ,.,fa· «y Repnnt e .,---. 1914b. The his/OJ] of Me ne,lIln lOCI .

Netherlands (1968). . Anthropos 9:640-46.~. 1914c. The terminology of totemlsm. 0

d h I O"V In 1926:3-2 .1916. Sociology an psyc 001;>1 Lancet 95912-14---. 1917. Freud's psychology of the unconSCIOUSd

d W J Perry len on.~ 1924. Social organization, e· . h Londondhl dGESmlt~ 1926. Psychology an et no ogy, e· South AlIa 1109-21.

Rooksby R L 1971 W. H. R. Rivers and the Todas f culture." Fall (cour-• RB' "C mparanvesnenceoRosenfels, E 1932 Lecture notes on - s 0

tesy of Edith Rosenfels Nash).Salter, E. 1972. Daisy Bates. Sydney.Schapera, 1. 1969. Interview, August 9.

190 GEORGEW. &rocKING, JR.

---, n.d. Sooal anthropology (Notes on R·B's lectures at Cape Town Unh'tTSity,19241J ISAL.

Shand, A. F. 1914. The foundations 01 chal1JCtn': &Ing 1I SOld, of l~ ~ of rJu.emotions and senlimmu. London.

Singer, M. 1973. A neglected source of srructuralism: Radclilft"-Brown. Russell, andWhitehead. Paper, Association of Social Amhropologtsts., Oxford, July 4-11.

Slobodin, R. 1978. \v. H. R. Riven.. ew York.Spencer, W. 8., & F. Gillen. 1899. T'Juo ""tit.'e' tribes 01Cmtml Au..umlia. Paperback ed,New York (1968).

Starmer, W. E. 1956.A. R. Radcliffe-Bmwn. K~ Anm. Soc. Ibpen 1J:1I6-25.---. 1967.Reflections on Durkhcim and aboriginal ~ligion_ In Social OTJWIlsarian:Ssays presented to Raymond Finh. ed. M. Freedman. 217-40. Chicago.

--. 1968. Radcliffe-Brown. A. R. Inc. Ency. Soc:. ScU. U:28)-'90.Stocking, G. W" Jr. 197J. From chronology to ethnology: James Cowles Prichard andBritish anthropology, 1800-1850. In J. c. Prichard, RnaurIIa intO W phpia1l hiswryof man, ix-cx. Reprint ed. Chicago.

--- .. 1976a. Ideas and insdrutions in American anthropologr. Thoughts towarda history of the interwar years. In Sel~ papns from 11ue Amnican Anrhropologi51,1-51 Washington, DC.

--. 1976b. Radcliffe-Brown, Lcwle and The hUwry of uhnoioglca/ rhmry. Hilt. Anlh.News/. 3(2):5-8.

---. 1977, Anarchy Brown's school day!: Cambridge anthropology in 1904. Hisl.Amh. News/. 4(1):11-12.

~. 19781'1.Die Geschichdichkeit der Wilden und die Geschichte der Ethnologie.Geschic:htf' and GeseUsc:ho.fL 452Q....35 ltrans. W. lepennics).

---. 1978b. T~e problems of translating beN'een paradigms: The 1933 debate be-tween Ralph Linton and Radcliffe-Brown. Hilt. Anca j nJ.'5l.5(1):7-9.

---. 197&. Philamhropoids and vanishing cultures: Rockefeller anthropology be-twcen the wars. TyPeSCript.

~. 1979. Anthropology at Chicago: Tradirion. diJdpline ti.epumnnJt llibtary exhibitbrochurel. Chicago. '

~: 19811'1.Apes, grandfathers and Rubicons: Some thoughts on an enduring ten-sIon lrl anthropology S . . ,. ympoSlum on amhropological implicadons of evolutlonal)theory, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 1.

--,-' ~981b. Books unfinished, tuming points unmarked: NOtes for an anri-history~t ropology. MOrtis Fishbein lecture for 1981, Chicago, May 18.N .~982. Gatekeeper to the field: E. W. P. Chinnery and the ethnography of theew UlOea Mandate. Hi5t. Amh. News/. 9(1}:3-12.

--. 19831'1.The ethnogra h' . F· I I fro"Ii IMP er s m<JgJc; Ie dwork in Bridsh anlhropo ogy \11yor to alinowski. HOA 1:50-120.

--. 1983b. The 'Genesis' f hi· ... h d I 0 ant ropo ogy: The discipline's first paradIgm. Dlstln-~ eI98~ture, Central States Anthropological Sociery, Cleveland, April 8.

.. h F' Anthropology and the science of the irrational· Malinowski's enCOun'ter Wit reud. Paper As ". . . 0

Tax S. 1978 . '. SO:-latlOn of SocIal Anthropologists, London, AprIl 1 ., . SemInar dISCUSSIon,February 2.

RADCLlFFE.BROWN AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 191

Tax, S., et al., eds. 19)3. An appraisal of anthropology today. Chicago.Thomas, N. W. 1906. Kimhip organisations and group marriage in Am.tTalia. London.TIE B 1888 On a method of investigating the development of msntunons ap-lyor, .. .plied to laws of marriage and desccnwl Amh. Ins!. 1~:245-72..

Urry, J. 1982. From zoology to ethnology: A. C. Haddons conversion to anthropol-

ogy. Canberra An!h. 5(2):58-85.Watson, E. G. 1946. Bill !O tUM! purpose! London.___ . 1968. Journey under southern stcrs. London. .' 1

White, Isobel. 1981. Mrs. Bates and Mr. Brown: An examlnallon of Rodney Need-

ham's allegations. Oceania 51;193-210.WHRP. See under Manuscript Sources.

In writing this essay I have drawn on research materials collecte~ since 1969 from. b! I hi h .• db-he following abbrevlallons:vanous arc Iva sources, I'.' lC are cue y.

ACHP. A. C. Haddon Papers, University Library, Cambridge, Engl~nd. J

. . . hrocolcsi M' s In the possession of PercrASAM. ASSOCIation of Social Ant rope OglSts, inures.Lloyd, University of Sussex, when consulted in 1969., .

U· . A h· Bancroft Library UniversityofCallforma, Berkeley.ruverslty rc IVes, Oil ' . . d E

Bronislaw Malinowski Papers, g-tnsh Library of Polmcal an conomlC

Science, London School of Economics. Cv I U' 'n,Library New Haven, ann.

Bronislaw Malinowski Papers, 11'1e OlVer,I", SBronislaw Malinowski books and offprints, University of Californfi~. ~nt:C . h book ~m "1d in the personal collection a IC arrUZ-In t I" rare ,vv, "Randolph.Archives, Cambridge University Press.Library lnstitme of Social Anthropology, Oxford.John S~ Bauye Library, Perth, Western Australia.Rockefeller FoundatiOn Archives, Tarry ton, NY .' L'bW. H. R. Rivers Papers, in the A. C. Haddon Papers, Unrverslty I rary,

Cambridge, England.

BillA.BMPL.

BMPY.BMSC.

CUPA.ISAL.jSBLRFA.WHRP.

Manuscript Sources