The Unbounded Reaches of Anthropology as a Research Science, and Some Working Hypotheses

Autor: Eliot D. Chapple
Rok vydání: 1980
Předmět:
Zdroj: American Anthropologist. 82:741-758
ISSN: 1548-1433
0002-7294
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1980.82.4.02a00020
Popis: I HOPE THAT THE BEGINNING PHRASE Of my title does not prove mystifying. To a sailor, a reach has two meanings: it is that point of sailing with the sheets eased, far preferable to a long beat to windward or running dead before the wind with all the instabilities of sea and wind which this creates, particularly in fore and afters; but a reach is also a long stretch of water with land close by on each side, like Eggemoggin Reach, or the Little Belt between Jutland and Fyen in Denmark. More encompassing, it describes an unbroken course of thousands of miles, the Clipper Way or Gallions Reach, used for generations in long-distance voyages of square riggers. It is in this latter sense that I think a reach is an appropriate image of anthropology's potential as a research science. We have begun on a voyage which will take us far. The shakedown at the start, now lasting about a century, puts us about at the place of elementary particle physics toward the end of the 19th century. Yet so much has been developed bearing on our understanding of the human condition in a wide variety of inquiries not limited to anthropology, that the wind seems to be fair, and the portents good. I must warn you, however, that my talk tonight will not be a review of what different people have contributed and the steps by which a research science is evolving. Rather, I
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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