The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885-1945.

Henrika Kuklick's fifty year social history of British anthropology provides an engaging and convincing case for the transformation of the emerging field from an applied, service-oriented discipline whose practitioners worked outside the academy to a theoretical, self-regulated field whose practitioners are mostly academics. She clearly and convincingly illustrates how the British "anthropologists" working during the period produced descriptions of peoples which can be understood both as reflections of their culture and as commentaries on their own society. Her book reflects a modem paradigm in which anthropologists include in their work a review of self and their intended audience; her perspective is illuminating for social historians and for anthropologists concerned with the history of the discipline.

Kuklick traces the development of anthropology as a discipline from the armchair evolutionists of the 1880s through the diffusionists of the early twentieth century to the functionalists of the forties with great precision and detail. Her work provides a particularly compelling case for the synergistic role of the colonial administration and the emerging discipline.

Kuklick argues that earlier practitioners of "anthropology" were a new brand of intellectuals, "men of affairs" who defined the field's practical value as the basis for its legitimacy. She demonstrates how the moral tone of anthropology was set by the personal/cultural attitudes of this new class of intellectuals whose ideas were linked to social practice in ways unequaled since. She suggests that a need to better understand Britain's role at home and in the colonies was the rationale for the development of this new field; to wit: "Tyler often termed anthropology the 'reformer's science'," the findings of which would enable the "great modern nations to understand themselves, to weigh in a just balance their own merits and defects and even in some measure to forecast ... the possibilities of the future."(1)

Kuklick begins The Savage Within, with an overview of the major historical changes that occurred over the 50 years. In following chapters, she reviews the relationship between these specific changes and the development of anthropological ideas and themes.

In the late nineteenth century "anthropologists" received no standard training and data gathering was done by amateurs. Anthropology was considered popular "science" in which results were meant for a general audience and for an audience of decision makers. Kuklick points out how the rise of the "meritocratic ideal" influenced the character of the early work of the evolutionist anthropologists. "Culture" was commonly defined by scholars who studied evolution as a synonym for western civilization. In the evolutionist's framework for conceptualizing human differences, it was assumed that all humanity must pass through developmental stages--beginning with "savagery" progressing to "barbarianism," and culminating in contemporary western civilization. Evolutionists believed that one could order all existing societies on a continuum from "primitive" to "civilized." They equated "primitive" peoples with children, women, and the mentally disordered, and "civilized" peoples with members of their own elite.

The generation of anthropologists working in the early twentieth century faced a very different world from that of the evolutionists. Kuklick shows how great Britain's relatively weaker role in international competition and her many conflicts at home influenced this next generation of anthropologists' view of human nature as less rational and encouraged them to see that "degeneration" was as natural as "progress." Their model of human adaptation was closer to Darwin than Lamark, and was most clearly expressed by diffusionist anthropologists who believed that shared cultural traits were the result of contact over time. Diffusionists believed that "race" did not determine behavior, that cultural and biological context between groups discredited any notion of either a "pure race" or a pristine culture.

Kuklick points out how British cultural perception of the enlarged role of the state was the basis for the functionalist school of anthropology which emerged immediately before and during the war. The functionalist school was based on the assumption that individual behavior was best understood as a product of social conditioning, that one needed to focus on the holistic, historical study of multiple cultures without imposing a value structure that saw western cultures as a goal.

Kuklick provides a particularly compelling case for the synergistic role of the colonial administration and the emerging discipline. She shows how the transformation of anthropology from a field in which theorists commented on data gathered by amateurs (including colonial administrators) to a field in which professional "field work" was indispensable, was influenced by a continued funding base from colonial administrators. She shows how evolutionism continued to be critical to colonial administrators' decision-making far beyond its relevance to the discipline, and how functionalists depended upon an identification with the colonial power to provide entry to field work.

In The Savage Within, Henrika Kuklick presents a dense, rich description of the relationship between anthropologists and public policy at a time in Britain when the two were directly and closely linked, when anthropologists justified their roles and their work in terms of practical application, and when their theories had a direct impact on public policy at home and in the colonies. She provides an intriguing glimpse of the changing justifications for their work, particularly to the colonial authorities funding their research. In a time before anthropologists were recognized as a self-regulated profession, when the logical "home" for their work was unclear, she provides a useful explanation for how and why British anthropologists reflected social scientific ideas of their time, in their behavior, and in the work they produced. Today, when no such widespread historical forces form a shared outlook for authors and readers and the goal of the anthropologists is less linked to social practice, her argument provides a challenge to the field. At a time when higher education is in acrimonious discussion about multiculturalism, and anthropology has much to offer the debate, there are important lessons to be learned from Kuklick's review of our more policy-focused past.

Barbara Lazarus Carnegie Mellon University 

ENDNOTE 

1. From E. B. Tyler, "Introduction," to Friedrich Ratzel's The History of Mankind (London, 1896), V. p., 7. Quoted in the Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885-1945.