ON STUDYING THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Dell H. Hymes
University of California, Berkeley
On April 13th and 14th of this year, a Conference on the History of
Anthropology was held in the chambers of the Social Science Research Council
in New Yfork City, attended by a number of anthropologists, some historians
of science, and a few other interested persons. A series of papers prepared
for the Conference were discussed. In this brief paper I should like to in-
form you about the Conference, not so much in terms of its content, as in
terms of its import. A list of participants and papers is appended for the
interest it may havre, but the main import of the Conference lies, I think,
not in the intr'insic value of what occurred--like most short conferences on
areas new to organized research, it was intense, varied, and confused--but in
the fact that it did occur. The occurrence of a formal conference on the his-
tor of anthropol7ogy marks a definite shift that affects the interests and
fortunes of us all.
I should like first to describe the nature of the shift somewhat in the
manner of a parable, then, to recommend a strategy for dealing with it.
The nature of the shift can be characterized in a preliminary may quite
briefly: as a (professional) tribe, we are about to be nade rather self-
conscious and uncomfortable.
We can be partly gratified by the attention, by being singled out for
study by historians of science. It must prove that our claims to be something
of a science are being given credence. If people so close to the centers of
(intellectual) prestige wish to study us, it must mean that we have been recog-
nized as a phenomenon of some importance.
Yet it means some discomfort too. After all, we have our own accounts of
our origin, nature, and destiny. Our revered elder men have often transmitted
them to us in'that part of the initiation known as the course on History and
Theory.  And who should know about these things of our past, if not ourselves,
who have been initiated into the ways of the group, who are privy to its oral
traditions, who can speculate retrospectively about our past with such author-
ity and confidence in our identity as insiders? Others may know or obtain
knowledge-of the names, the dates, and the Important Theories; some of us have
even 'led -the public into thinking of such externals as the whole story, by pub-
lishing them as our history. But of course there is lacking the esoteric lore
that elders sometimes impart to us, as badge of their status and sign of favor,
orally in little groupsm-the personal detail that shows the trickster side of
a culture hero, the exemplum that reveals the true hagiology of the field, etc.
It may seem at first that the historians of science visit us simply out
of sincere interest in these traditions of ours, to be edified by them, as we
have been, and to record them for the rest of the world and posterity, lest
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they be lost. Eventually, howevere, we may discover that our attentive visitors
do not always take our accounts at face-value. They move from one campfire to
another, and compare notes.  We realize that they could hardly become one with
us, if they have not undergone the same sort of initiation (fieldwork), been
exposed to our ways early enough in their careers. But, disconcertingly, they
seem untroubled, and confident in ways of their own. They even presume to di*
cide for themselves what portion of our accounts they will believe. lht for
some of us is a single rative category of #The (Glorious/Inglorious) Past,0
they divide and redistribute among several other categories of their own, such
as "documented," "worth checking," "u.nreliable," and, even, 'folklore.0  What
for some of us is an historical black and white with all the sharp intellectual
appeal of a well plotted Western, they dissemble into a motley of shadings,
mostly grey.  Sometimes they go so far as to impugn or dispute our ancestry,
interpolating forefathers of whom we have no memory; crediting noble deeds and
inventions to men who are not the culture heros about whom we tell such things;
tracing lines of descent in ways that don't at all support our present segmen-
tary oppositions.
And they seriously threaten to put all this into books, and to publish it
to the world as what we are really like.
There will indeed be many such books a decade or a generation from now.
How are we to respond (we cannot prevent it)? As in the cartoon in which the
elders of a Pacific island forego the tribal initiation rites, and hand each
youngster a copy of a book by Margaret Mead instead? Shall we simply hand our
students bibliographies with exotic names, and send them off to other departments
to learn who their fathers were? While the elders, demoted from their roles as
arbiters- of the past, shrink off into the bush and the night, muttering, "It
wasn't like that at all, not like that at all"?
The situation is mildly embarrassing, especially if we wish to protest,
since we have been in the business of doing the very same thing to other groups-
for years.
In essence, and more directly, I am saying that a good deal of the history
of anthropology is going to be written by men who are not by origin, perhaps not
even by aspiration or empathy, anthropologists.  lhat should be our view, then,
of the question, "Who shall write the history of anthropology"? Shall we turn
the subject wholly over to historians of science and scholarship? Or shall
anthropologists continue to take part?
The best solution, I believe, is one already validated in the history of
science, and one for which there is ample precedent among oursolves: turn some
of the informnts into professional collaborators. As put by Dr. Ric1ad
Shryock, himself an eminent figure in the history of science, the impitant
thing is not the particular origin of the scholar, but that he know enough both
of the science, and of history. Historians can learn anthropology; anthropolo-
gists can learn history.
I believe that this solution is not only best, but necessary. I would
add only the qualification that it should not be one-sided, that there be not
only historians that learn anthropology, but also anthropologists, some of them,
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that learn history. In short,$ we must prepare to train some anthropologists
as specialists in the history of anthropology. (This has already occurred
in one or two cases at the University of Pennsylvania.)
But let me now proceed to say a little about the content of the Confer-
ence, and the ways in which its characteristics point to the desirability of
this course. I should like to single out three chracteristics that were both
apparent and important:  (1) how much the professioralimtion of our history
is already under'way; (2) how important our history is to us in current theory
and controversy, (3) that the historian of anthropology., nee hittorian, and
the historian of anthropology., nee anthropologist, converge, but do- not merge
entirely,-
-As to the first point:  it is fair to say that only a portion of those
participating in the Conference are, or intend to be, truly professional his-
torians of anthropology; but the presence of that portion was umistakable.
Some of the distinctive traits, one or more of which enable-one to recognize
their presence, are these: use of out of the way and unfamiliar sources, in-
cluding unpublished ones, such as letters; attention to textual detail; hori-
zontal sectioning, relating an author to contemporary, including non-
anthropological, figures and ideas; in general, a clear sense of historical
context, and of historical problem. In other words: use of more than the
"great books" as sources; attention to the interaction between ideas and their
verbal embodiment, alertness to find other than present meanings in past usage,
more than mere "semanticst in an author's wrestling with his verbal tools; see-.
ing more than the "vertical" dimension of the profession's history that can be
viewed as a lineal succession down through time; in general, judgments that are
not arachronistic or a priori, but informed by historical relativism that anf
sirs to an anthropologist's wariness of ethnocentrism; studies that are more
than chronicle.
As one of the papers that had these marks of a truly professional history
of anthropology, let me cite that on Tylor and the concept of culture by my
colleague in the Department of History, George Stocking. When someone writes
a paper showing that Matthew Arnold held a position of major importance in the
cultural life of the times vis-a-vis that held by Tylor, between which there
was an interaction; that Arnold in fact held a conception of culture closer in
some respects than Tylor's to our own; and, further, that the changes in the
use of the terms "culture" and "civilization" in parallel passages of Boas'
earlier and later writings show that when Kroeber and Kluckhohn attributed the
modern concept of culture to Tylor's definition, and to Boas an apparent delay
of a generation -in its subsequent development, they had matters almost exactly
turned about--then we are in the presence of a level of scholarship which makes
retrospective specu-lation about our history passe, If we want to talk about it
ourselves, we will have to meet similar standards.
As to the second point: each time a major intellectual issue arose--the
relationship of science and humanities in anthropology; the comparative method;
the place of Boas--an historical topic was converted-into a substantive contem-
porary issue, enlisting arguments and sometimes emotions, among the anthropolo-
gists present.  A negative lesson is how little ready sense of historical prob-
lem in this area most anthropologists have, or at least how difficult they find
it to be historical about themselves. On the positive side, however, it shows
that our history cannot be a matter of indifference to us, and that one reason
for training historians of anthropology is to provide some objective control
over our use of our history for legitimation, theory, and controversy. If some
of the historians are anthropologists, their value is likely to be increased in
these regards, as being sensitive to the relevance of the history to current
issues.
Some controversies will dissolve, or at least change their character,
when studied historically in an adequate way; and the essential c6ntroversies
will show in a clearer light.  It becomes a little silly to charge Bas with
not having solved the social organization of the Kwkiutl, if, as Eggan pointed
out at the Conference, the proper concepts to appl;y to the Kwakiutl were not
developed in the field until a few years ago. More historically appropriate
issues about Boas can be investigated. Of course historians of science them-
selves may become personally involved in anthropological controversies.  It is
not a question of resolving perennial issues by historical study,, but of deal-
ing with them on a more worthwhile level.
As to the third point:  the scholar with an historian's starting point,
and the scholar with an anthropologist's starting point, has each a somewhat
different groundsense, a somewhat different predisposition and comfortableness
with-particular kinds of material. This appeared in the kinds of comments and
points of fact contributed to the discussions at the Conference. In my own
paper I argued at some length for the contribution which the practicing anthro-
pologist could make to the history of his field, including some historical topics
in which-he alone is likely to be interested.  Obviously, as 'aymond Firth stated
at the-Conference, and my preceding paragraphs imply, there is equally an essen-
tial contribution which the professional historian can make. But this returns
us to the msin point, that we need the contributions of both. I should like to
close by relating that point to one further consideration.
Anthropology today is flushed with success in the United States; course
enrollments increase, and across the board; jobs multiply; sources of funds en-
large. To some extent this mterial success may be misleading as an index of
the future. Not that there may not always be an anthropology, but that besides
the indices of quantity, some of quality should be considered.  Consider how
much has changed in the terms of our competition, as it were, in the ecological
niche of other related fields.  The mjor ideological battle that American
anthropology has fought in the past generation has been largely won; almost
everyone is a cultural relativist now (in the sense in which the term is opposed
to parochialism, and ethnocentrism).  And our private preserve, the parts of the
world no one else much seemed to want to study, is no longer ours. Scholars in
almost every field of study today are going to Africa, India, Pakistan, the
Philippines, etc.  In short., two traits that have been of central importance and
have formed much of our present image--cultural relativism, and fieldwork in
faraway places--no longer give us an evolutionary advantage.
To a large extent, then, we can maintain our place, not by what we do, but
only by the way we do it.  Having lost much of what advantage we had in the way
of unique outlook and subject of study, we have to look much more to the quality
of our work.  That statement has many implications. One, I believe, is the
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deepening of standards of historical scholarship among anthropologists, both for
work on special topics-and on the history of anthropology.  Specialization of
some of us in the history of science as it concerns anthropology is one route.
NOTE
1. Tfiis paper was read In its essentials under the title "The History of Anthro-
pology: SSRC Conference Report"- at the 1962 annual meetings of the Kroeber
Anthropolog1ical Society, meeting jointly with the Southwestern Anthropologi-
cal Association, in Berkeley, April 13-lU.  I am indebted to the organizers
of- the Conference, and the SSRC; and I should like to thank Jomn H. Rowe
for- much stimulation and encouragement to my own interest in the history of
anthropology. The notes on the narks of professional historical papers stem
from some comments of his.
QMendix
PAPERS FCR THE CONFERENCE ON THE HISTCRY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
(In the order in which they were suwmarized by their
authors as topics for discussion. Papers not discussed
are so indicated after the title.)
I. Conceptual Perspectives: General Considerations and Problems.
A. Irving hllowell, Anthropology and the History of the Study of Man.
Frederica de Laguna, Folklore in the History of Anthropology.
(Briefly discussed in the mornin9 discussed further in the after-
noon when Dro de Lagura arrived0)
Sol Tax, J. S. Slotkin's Work in the History of Anthropology.  (Not
discussedo)
II. External Historical Events and Differential National DeveloEMntso
Harr L. Shapiro, Anthropology and the Age of Discovery.
Robert Heine-Geldern,9 One Hundred Years of Ethnological Theory in the
Gernan Speaking Countries: Some Milestones.
Alfred Metraux, Some French Precursors of South American Anthropology
(XVIth to XVIIIth Century).
VIII. Applications of Anthropo]logy.
VIII.   of
Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Study of Social Problems by American Anthro-
pologists. (shifted to Friday from Saturday.)
III.  Interrelations with Other Disciplines and Influences.
John CO Greene, The Role of Anthropology in the Rise of Evolutionary
Ideaso
Bernard Barber, Some Relations between Anthropology and Sociology: One
Sociologist's Life-Historyo
IV. Characteristic Methods and Conceptua1lisations.
Kenneth Eo Bock, The Comparative Method of Anthropology.  (Not discussed.)
Fred Eggan, Some Reflections on the Comparative Method in Anthropology.
David H. French, Anthropological Interpretations of Similarities and
Differences,
George W. Stocking, Jr., Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of
Invention (with an appendix on Evolutionary Ethnology and the Growth
of Cultural Relativism, 1871-1915   From Culture to Cultures).
VI. The Role of Individuals in the Development of the Field. (Discussed
before Vo F
Jacob W. Gruber, Biogrphy as an Instrument for the History of Anthropology,
John F. Freeuasn, Biography in the History of Anthropology:  The .Cse of
Henry Schoolcrafto
Leslie A. White, The Ethnographry and Ethnology of Franz Boas.
Nancy O0 L-Uie, Early Women in American Anthropology.
C. F. Voegelin, Typology of Information for  eciphering Writing.   (Dis-
cussed here because of Its emphasis on individual personalities,
rather than under V where originally listed.)
V.  Sub-divisions of the Field and Special Problems.
A. Linguistics'.
Dell'H. Hymes, Toiard a History of Linguistic Anthropology.
Rulon Wells, Phonemics in the Nineteenth Century, 1876-1900.
Bo Ethnology.
Melville J. Herskovits, A Genealogy of Ethnological Theory.
C. Social Anthropology.
1aymond Firth, History of Modern Social Anthropology.
VII* Develomnt of Professionalization.
Edward Lurie, The Origins and Development of the Profession of Anthropol-
ogy in the United States0
IX. General Discussion.
(Joseph Spengler, parallels from the study of history of economics)
(Sol Tax, substantive issues, methods, practical issues, including publi-
cation, and follow-up: agenda for another conference?)
Also Present.
Harry Alpert, University of Oregon
Clifford Geertz, University of Chicago (Saturday afternoon only.)
Pendleton Herring, Social Science Research Council
Daniel Lerner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alexander Lesser, Hofstra College
Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr., Social Science Research Council
Thomas A. Sebeok, Indiana University
Richard H. Shryock9 American Philosophical Society
Florence M. Voegelin9 Indiana University
Harry 'Woolf, The Johns Hopkins University
Invited but absent:
Kenneth Eo Bock, University of Califbrnia9 Berkeley
Donald Ho Fleming, Harvard University
Charles CO Gillispie, Princeton University
Robert Ko Merton, Columbia University
Ernest hgel,, Columbia University
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