Some Main Trends in American Anthropology in 1961

• DOI: 10.1177/000271626233900113
• Author: Gene Weltfish
• Published date: 01 January 1962
• Date: 01 January 1962
• Subject Matter: Articles

171

Some

Main

Trends

in

American

Anthropology

in

1961

By

GENE

WELTFISH

Gene

Weltfish,

Ph.D.,

Madison,

New

Jersey,

is

Assistant

Professor

of

Social

Science,

Fairleigh

Dickinson

University,

Madison,

New

Jersey.

She

formerly

was

Lecturer

in

the

Department

of

Anthropology,

Columbia

University.

She

is

author

of

Caddoan

Texts,

South

Band

Pawnee

Dialect

(1937) ;

with

Ruth

F.

Benedict,

The

Races

of

Mankind

(1943);

The

Origins

of

Art

(1953);

and

a

volume

on

life

of

the

Pawnee

and

Pawnee

music

recordings

are

now

in

preparation.

She

is

a

frequent

contributor

of

articles

to

scholarly

journals.

AS a

social

discipline,

anthropology

is

the

space-time

science

of

hu-

man

behavior.

Its

global

character

is

implicit,

and

its

time

dimension,

the

more

than

a

million-year

life

span

of

the

human

race

and

its

antecedents

be-

fore

that.

Anthropology

is

distinguished

from

the

other

human

sciences

in

that

what-

ever

aspect

of

human

activity

or

struc-

ture

may

be

under

consideration,

the

totality

of

mankind

in

time

and

space

is

its

major

referent.

Some

anthropolo-

gists

exhibit

determined

loyalty

to

spe-

cial

subjects,

but,

in

all,

the

element

of

man’s

total

community

is

still

an

under-

lying

theme.

Since

this

is

the

first

article

on

an-

thropology

in

the

summary

of

disci-

plines

series,

I

shall

rely

heavily

on

meetings,

congresses,

and

journals

to

illustrate

current

trends.

The

Annual

Meeting

of

the

American

Anthropologi-

cal

Association

in

mid-November

1960

in

Minneapolis

opened

the

anthropo-

logical

year.

A

primary

division

of

sub-

jects

is

between

topics

and

areas.

The

category

of

areas

refers

to

geographic

divisions

of

the

world

in

their

cultural

connotations.

The

category

of

topics

covers

a

wide

range

from

the

techniques

and

theories

of

the

major

subdisciplines

to

questions

of

a

more

generalized

na-

ture

about

man

and

society.

DIVISIONS

OF

ANTHROPOLOGY

The

original

basis

for

the

range

of

subdisciplines

in

American

anthropology

is

the

establishment

by

Franz

Boas

of

race

or

physique,

language,

and

culture

as

independent

variables

in

the

dynam-

ics

of

culture

development,

as

opposed

to

earlier

views

of

physical

causality

in

the

development

of

language

and

cul-

ture.

Today,

each

of

the

major

sub-

disciplines

has

a

society

and

a

publica-

tion

program

of

its

own,

and

these

are

affiliated

with

the

broader

American

Anthropological

Association.

Currently,

the

special

affiliated

fields

are:

ethnol-

ogy

(American

Ethnological

Society,

Publications) ;

linguistics

(International

Journal

o f

American

Linguistics;

An-

thro pological

Linguistics ) ;

archaeology

(Society

for

American

Archaeology,

American

Antiquity) ;

physical

anthro-

pology

(American

Journal

o f

Physical

Anthropology;

Human

Biology) ;

folk-