Disciplinary Action: A General Survey of Anthropological Interdisciplinarity From

Three Theoretical Perspectives

Justin Quinn

Clifford Geertz, offering his opinion on what exactly the discipline of anthropology

should be about, turns to a dictionary definition of “discipline” in his 1995 work, After the

Fact. According to the entry he cites, “discipline” can mean:

“(1) Training that is expected to produce a specified character or pattern of

behavior, especially that which is expected to produce moral or mental

improvement. (2) Controlled behavior resulting from such training. (3) A

systematic method to obtain obedience: a military discipline. (4) A state of

order based upon submission to rules and authority. (5) Punishment intended

to correct or train. (6) A set of rules or methods, [such] as those regulating a

church or monastic order. (7) A branch of knowledge or teaching (1995:97)”

These definitions all have something in common with the conceptualization and

practice of anthropology in the era between Boas’ concretization of the discipline and

Geertz’s own ascendancy. The dynamics of training, behavior, method, order,

punishment and knowledge have been central to defining anthropology as a

discipline, particularly in the face of competing disciplines within the academy. This

survey will explore the relationships between anthropology and the disciplines which

have contributed to, and often contested with, anthropology as a means for

understanding the human condition in the span between Boas and Geertz, through the

lens of three major theoretical perspectives – Boasian historical particularism,

functionalism, and materialism. Finally, we briefly return to Geertz’s work to observe

his synthesis of the empirical aspirations of the aforementioned schools with the
humanistic influences that had been neglected or assailed since Boas’ day, and to

consider the disciplinary relationships of anthropology as a whole.

The relevance of disciplinary training, behavior, method, order, punishment

and knowledge referenced above by Geertz is, and has been, of central importance for

anthropology in the context of other disciplines. The means by which knowledge is

apprehended and represented by various theoretical approaches is decided by a

number of factors. Chiefly, training an anthropologist to record the correct behavior

by way of applying a particular method which will then properly order the empirical

and experiential aspects of fieldwork has been the disciplinary paradigm since ‘Papa’

Franz Boas made armchair anthropology passé. However, over the years, there has

been considerable punishment meted out by disciples of competing theoretical

perspectives. It has served as a crucible which negotiates the value (and validity) of

approaches borrowed from or inspired by other disciplines within the academy. In

doing so, it has redefined (more than once) what anthropology is, and it has often

done so by defining (and contesting!) what anthropology is not.

Boas considered the four-field approach critical for comprehensively

recording and understanding non-literate, ‘primitive’ societies, and essential in

addressing the frequently racist and often pseudoscientific conjecture that was the

norm for anthropology in that era1. His primary concern was the absence or near-

absence of rigorous ethnographic fieldwork; when it did occur, it tended to place

results onto a pre-supposed evolutionary schema that, for the most part, was used to

1
The relationship between the various elements of the ‘four field’ approach (cultural and biological
anthropology, archeology and linguistics) represents another important angle of disciplinary analysis.
However, the scope of this survey seeks a more general focus balanced between internal and external
influences than such an avenue of inquiry would permit.
validate the racialist colonial ideologies of his day2 (Baker 1998:100-108, 120-125,

McGee Warms 2008a, Silverman 2005).

This is not to say that many of the ideas of these armchair theorists and their

semi-scientific contemporaries were never based on data Boas would have considered

empirically sound; rather, it was that he insisted the same methodological rigor

Darwin employed in Origin of Species (1872 [orig. 1859]) should be used when

discussing anthropological theories – namely, by testing them against exhaustive

fieldwork. This focus on empiricism—and, more importantly, its application in

research and representation—would set the tone for anthropology in the next three-

quarters of a century. At times, it was more of a concern than the theoretical and

ethnographic material being considered (Boas 1919 [orig. 1974], Geertz 1995,

McGee Warms 2008a, Silverman 2005).

Boas conceptualized cultures as consisting of learned material, symbolic and

social aspects of shared, adaptive human behavior, in contrast to contemporary

psychological explanations, which emphasized instinct3. However, he considered the

psychological component of culture, along with the environmental and historical, to

be essential in understanding a given cultural system, with the historical being the

most important aspect4. Additionally, he attempted to wed an historical approach to

the natural sciences, suggesting the various disciplines of the academy could, and

should, make use of the historically particular development of scientific knowledge,

2
Boas’ own status as a Jew of German descent (and personal convictions, no doubt) quite likely influenced
his opposition to orthogenetic evolutionary theories as much as his desire to legitimate anthropology as a
scientific discipline did, and can be seen with his extensive work with the NAACP and his work for the U.
S. government (Baker 1998, McGee Warms 2008).
3
Compare this to the unilinear evolutionists’ concept of Culture (note the lack of a plural) as a synonym of
Civilization, both of the monolithic, proper noun variety.
4
Boas, however, disagreed with psychology’s attempt to create a deductive theory of human behavior; for
Boas, it was only by the particular collection of specific data that an inductive explanation of a social
system be produced.
allowing for the exchange of ideas across disciplines. Furthermore, he noted the role

of political economy (though he did not call it this) in shaping the individual

researcher and thus her research; this prescient observation would foreshadow issues

discussed by Geertz in his attempt to re-synthesize the investigation and

deconstruction of epistemological ideas at the other end of the period between these

two anthropologists (Boas 1974 [orig. 1919], Geertz 1973, 1988:1-24, 129-149,

McGee Warms 2008a, Silverman 2005).

The functionalist and materialist schools represent alternative ways of

operationalizing Boas’ ideas, basing their approaches on, to paraphrase Malinowski

(1961:1) differing “subjects, method and scope”. The focus of a given investigation—

and the data deemed valid for inclusion—were the primary factors which would

attract an anthropologist to these perspectives. However, personal backgrounds and

the contemporary political economy would also have a role in shaping these camps,

as did the nature of the relationship of anthropology with the rest of the academy,

which we will now explore.

Bronislaw Malinowski, like Boas, had a background in the natural sciences,

particularly mathematics and physics. They also, perhaps unsurprisingly, shared an

interest in rigorous fieldwork. Building on Boas’ example, Malinowski made a name

for himself by further refining ethnographic field methods (McGee Warms 2008b,

Moore 2009:134-46).

As Boas would have noted, Malinowski was indeed a product of his time, and

to a certain extent, the political economy of the era certainly influenced his work; his

Austrio-Hungarian citizenship necessitated his extended stay in the Trobriand

Islands, the site of his now-famous fieldwork. The islands, administered by the
United Kingdom by way of Australia, were unfriendly territory for Malinowski; upon

his arrival, he was given the option of house arrest for the duration of the conflict

(which, at two years, would become the standard period for “proper” ethnographic

research for decades) or immediate ejection. Obviously, he chose the former (Moore

2009:134-46, Stocking 1983, Wilk and Cliggett 2007:37-8).

Malinowski’s work in the Trobriands would take the shape of his classic

ethnography Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1961 [orig. 1922]), which focused

heavily on the economic aspects of local culture, particularly the Kula trade.

Malinowski’s research (and critique of homo economicus) would lead to a decades-

long debate (the substantative-formalist) in economic anthropology; careers were

spent by the likes of Karl Polanyi5 and Edward LeClair attempting to reconcile

assumed human universals implicit in economic theory with the realities of

‘primitive’ economies as observed by Malinowski. These camps, largely arguing past

rather than with each other, tended to attack each other’s competency in their

respective fields of primary interest (anthropology or economics) as much if not more

than the content of the ideas. Malinowski had, in truth, a considerable knowledge of

economics (he taught at the London School of Economics – not exactly a second-rate

institution!) which was one of the main factors that influenced the focus of his

Trobriand inquiry (Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922], Moore 2009:134-46, Wilk and

Cligget 2007:5-8, 10-11, 37-8, 128-30).

5
Incidentally, Polanyi was also an Austrio-Hungarian intellectual who was influenced by the political
economy of his time, as well as his personal background; he and his wife’s radical political outlooks would
necessitate their leaving Austria in the years before the Second World War, and would complicate their
asylum in the United States. Polanyi’s wife was denied entry because of her political associations, forcing
Polanyi to commute between the United States and Canada, which granted his wife asylum. Interestingly,
unlike some of his critics in economic anthropology, (and Malinowski, with whom he agreed) Polanyi did
not conduct any major fieldwork to support his ideas, instead relying on the work of others much like the
discipline (economics) both he and economic anthropology were critical of (Karl Polanyi 2010).
 In another example of what would become the standard for ethnographic

writing, Malinowski began his Trobriand account with a detailed analysis of his field

methods. He compared ethnographic inquiry to scientific inquiry in the natural

sciences, noting “No one would dream of making an experimental contribution to

physical or chemical science, without giving a detailed account of all the

arrangements of the experiments” (1961 [orig. 1922]:2). He would, however, be

criticized for eliding his own presence (and the colonial history associated with it) as

one of the variables involved – a departure from the historical particularism of Boas

which we will explore at length later (Moore 2009:134-46).

Interestingly, Malinowski seems to have created a hierarchy of sciences based

on the precision of the observability of variables, placing chemistry and physics at the

top, followed by “less exact” (1961 [orig. 1922]:2) sciences like geology and biology

followed by the particularly fuzzy realm of ethnography. He explicitly mistrusted

historical and “native” accounts as potentially distorted, preferring to rely on

observable phenomena recorded in the context of their social behavior, a method he

attributes to sociology. Still, he takes care to emphasize the importance of a “native”

understanding, as his arguments on “native” economic rationality in Argonauts would

show6 (Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922], Moore 2009:134-46).

Malinowski’s emphasis on starting with empirical phenomena (e.g. kinship,

economic phenomena and ceremonial activities) allowed him to create a framework

with which to construct both emic and etic levels of analysis. This foreshadowed the

6
This was in large part a response to contemporary economic theories that were similar to orthogenetic
ones Boas had previously employed empiricism to combat in anthropology. Unlike Boas, however,
Malinowski’s criticism of these ideas did not take hold outside of the sub-discipline of economic
anthropology, probably in large part due to disciplinary territorialism.
development of these analytics by Marvin Harris and Victor Turner of the materialist

and symbolic/interpretational camps (respectively)7 (Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922]).

Still, Malinowski acknowledged the importance of recording the

“imponderabilia of actual life” (1961 [orig.1922]:18) for creating a synthetic, holistic

understanding of a culture. He accomplished this through a more rigorous application

of the participant observation employed by Boas and Cushing before him, and

keeping personal diaries, which would themselves become additional hallmarks of

‘proper’ ethnographic methods (Moore 2009:134-46, Silverman 2005, Stocking

1983).

The most important example of theory which arose as a result of such an

approach was his theory of needs, through which he traced the function of various

aspects of Trobriand culture to satisfy the biopsychological needs of the individual in

the face of specific environmental problems. Like Boas, psychology played an

important role in understanding culture8; however, it was, due to the emphasis on how

cultural structures functioned to serve the needs of the individual, emphasized to the

exclusion of history including that of his and the broader colonial presence.

Malinowski was heavily criticized for this, particularly in the upheaval of the post

World War II era by the materialists, to whom we will now turn (Malinowski 1961

[orig. 1922], Moore 2009:134-46, Silverman 2005, Stocking 1983).

7
Malinowski did not refer to these levels of analysis as emic and etic as Harris (2001[1979]) did, nor did he
separate his analyses into the three levels discussed by Turner (2008 [orig. 1967]), but the roots of these
ideas are certainly visible. The influence of psychoanalytic thought can also be seen with the shared
assumption that it is difficult if not impossible to take an objective view of a system they are a participant
in, necessitating an “outside” view for a comprehensive study. However, Malinowski, like Boas, was
critical of psychology’s claims to universality (McGee Warms 2008 [orig. 1922]:163-79)
8
Malinowski’s particular “brand” of functionalism is referred to as “psychological” functionalism. This
was to differentiate it from Radcliffe-Brown’s “structural” functionalism, which sought to discover
observable, behavioralistic social laws, considering culture to be an abstract, non-empirical and thus
pointless subject to investigate. In its place, Radcliffe-Brown focused on enduring phenomena like kinship
(McGee Warms 2008b).
 If Malinowski’s brand of functionalism represents a shift away from the

historical toward the biological and psychological in the realm of theory, coupled

with a redoubling of a move to empirical methods ostensibly based on the natural

sciences, the materialists can together be seen as a both a response to the failure of

Malinowski’s ideas to address change, and as a continued refinement of empirically-

oriented methods (McGee Warms 2008c, Moore 2009:134-46).

Separately, the materialists can be further typologized into neo-evolutionary

and neo-materialist groups, all of whom were influenced both by the politico-

economic theories of Marx and the contemporary anti-Marxist political climate,

which necessitated a certain degree of discretion. Leslie White is perhaps the best

example of the neo-evolutionaries, as well as being the least successful in negotiating

the reactionary political terrain of the post World War II era. Marvin Harris, Sydney

Mintz and Eric Wolf serve as excellent examples of the neo- materialists who

managed to sidestep many of the political issues which plagued White’s career by

keeping a lower profile in a period (a decade and a half later) that was much

friendlier to scholars drawing on ideas from the left end of the political spectrum

(McGee Warms 2008c, 2008d).

White’s embrace of an evolutionary theoretical perspective was not merely an

American response to the European structural-functionalist camp; seeking to analyze

cultural change via an evolutionary framework placed it at odds with the Boasian

school’s historical particularism, as well as with reactionary elements in the academy

and society more generally (Barnard 2004:39-40, Price 2001, Moore 2009:179-93).

White, who studied psychology and sociology in addition to anthropology at

Columbia and the New School for Social Research, and originally intended on being
a natural scientist, would end up teaching at the University of Rochester and the

Buffalo Museum of Science. His proximity to the location of Lewis Henry Morgan’s

work with the Iroquois would lead him to eventually drop the Boasian anti-unilinear

evolutionary stance, and to attempt to create a modern version clearly influenced by

his interest in physics and the natural sciences (Moore 2009:179-93, McGee Warms

2008c, Rieth 2006, White 2006 [orig. 1959]).

White’s repackaging of the nomothetic evolutionary analytic wedded the

‘grand theory’ approach of the nineteenth century with the empirical focus of the

natural sciences; in fact, White considered anthropology to be an extension of the

natural sciences, measuring the manner in which, like Malinowski, culture suits the

needs of humanity. White differed from Malinowski, however, by focusing on

change, using human social organization in relationship to energy as his primary

analytic, and in considering that culture met the needs of the species, not the

individual. White’s perspective attempted to make connections between a wide array

of natural sciences (e.g. biology, paleontology, physics), and, though it accounted for

change in a more geological sense, attempted to push anthropology away from

history, and the humanities in general (Barnard 2004:39-40, McGee Warms 2008c,

Rieth 2006, White 2006 [orig. 1959]).

White’s division of culture into technological, sociological and ideological

realms show the influence of Marx on his ideas; his emphasis on the technological (as

opposed to Marx’s ideological) was necessary to wed energy as an analytic to Marx’s

societal divisions along base, structure and superstructure. White’s ideas about

complexity (in terms of energy mustered for subsistence) seemed to correlate with

Marx’s ideas about political evolution. However, they also implied that more
“complex” (advanced) societies were somehow better, and inevitable, which White

would be criticized for. Additionally, he was criticized for the lack of agency his

ideas (and most generalizing theories) allowed, and how little the realm of the

symbolic figured into his theory. Moreover, although he had in fact published

multiple major ethnographies on American Indian cultures in the southwestern U.S.,

his evolutionarily-oriented theoretical work relies mostly on the work of others, or

remains highly abstract, eschewing concrete examples—seemingly contradicting the

‘hard science’ stance White’s theories adopted (Donham 2006, McGee Warms

2008c, Moore 2009:179-93, White 2006 [orig. 1959]).

White’s ideas did not only clash with the Boasians; his personal politics

clearly informed his theory, and his confrontational style caused him to clash with the

conservative elements of his school, the academy, clergy, and even to provoke the

attention of the F.B.I. in the McCarthy era. Even with this controversy, however,

White managed to help assemble one of the premier departments of anthropology in

America at the University of Michigan. Perhaps just as importantly, he had the

courage to profess ideas which ran counter to many of the prevailing political and

intellectual currents of his era (Price 2001, Rieth 2006).

In summary, let us return to Geertz’s disciplinary definitions of training,

behavior, method, order, punishment and knowledge. When one compares these

definitions via the intersecting method with Malinowski’s rubric for understanding

the organization of his own work (subject, method and scope), we have a useful pair

of analytical frameworks for these three schools of thought in terms of their

intellectual orientation (Geertz 1995, Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922]).

 The historical particularists under Boas took as their subject a holistic

approach to individual cultures that included both the material and the symbolic,

arguing it was necessary to understand them on their own terms rather than in a

comparative fashion, placing their scope at a micro level in terms of the

particularism. The method was, as described above, a call to comprehensive and

empirical fieldwork, which Boas advocated in order to exact punishment on those

who supported unscientific and racist theories. In turn, this outspokenness to the

national and academic political climate of his day set him up for some in return, as

well (Boas 1974 [orig. 1919], McGee Warms 2008a, Silverman 2005).

Boas’ previous academic training in physics certainly influenced the way he

thought about knowledge, though his admonition for the inclusion of the historical

alongside his push for empiricism in a discipline which was, at that time, aspiring to

natural science, was surprisingly farseeing. His aggressive push to spread his method

based on a historico-scientific episteme would eventually upset and replace the order

of the discipline of anthropology through the spread of his ideas via the behavior of

his students as they became the dominant force in American anthropology (Boas

1974 [orig. 1919], McGee Warms 2008a, Silverman 2005).

Structural-functionalism as personified by Malinowski also took a holistic

view of culture as a subject of inquiry, considering, like Boas, both the material and

symbolic. It was also particular in scope, focusing on specific cultures to the

exclusion of others, though it differed from Boas’ camp in that by creating a more

explicit focus on the subject of inquiry—the function of culture to meet the needs of

an individual—it focused on a bounded culture to the exclusion of all others, and of

other times as well (Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922], McGee Warms 2008c).
 Malinowski’s method, as described above, was an increasingly rigorous

empiricism, no doubt also informed by his own training in the natural sciences as it

was by the punishment he received for being an Austrio-Hungarian citizen attempting

a wartime study in an English colonial dependency. Malinowski managed to initially

avoid censure for methodological divergence that would have put in him at odds with

the Boasians, though he certainly had to compete with Radcliffe-Brown to establish

the proper order for structural-functionalism’s direction as the dominant English

paradigm. The difference in how to produce valid knowledge, differing on whether

the subject of inquiry should be the individual or the relationship between social

structures and social actions was never really decided, leaving the order of a broader

functionalist school divided (Malinowski 1961 [orig. 1922], McGee Warms 2008c).

Malinowski’s ahistorical behavior (as well as his failure to account for his

own presence) brought sharp criticism, as did his posthumously published diaries. It

(thankfully) became increasingly difficult to look at cultures as bounded, unchanging

entities at the same time that it became increasingly difficult (at least in the United

States) to admit theoretical genealogies that could be traced to Karl Marx, or to even

challenge established theoretical orthodoxy. It is in this context that Leslie White

became a veritable glutton for punishment, espousing views and exhibiting behavior

which, though cautiously handled, still managed to rankle the order of the dominant

Boasian paradigm, and of American society in general (McGee Warms 2008c, 2008d,

Price 2001).

The root of this unorthodoxy lay less in White’s formal training than in his

personal predilection for physics, and the happenstance proximity to a field site of an

anthropologist from the pre-Boasian order. White attempted to wrest the focus of
anthropology toward a new subject of inquiry, which, in White’s mind, represented a

stronger move towards truly scientific knowledge (Moore 2009:179-93, Rieth 2006,

White 2006 [orig. 1959]).

White’s method, which employed the degree of energy use in the means of

production as his subject, was very much the quintessential grand theory, macro-level

in scope. White intended the obliteration of any humanistic sense of history, or any

sort of particularism, which he considered superfluous, in favor of what he

considered to be more objective, fundamental, and therefore relevant criteria (White

2006 [orig. 1959]).

Taken together, these three camps exhibit some clear patterns when compared

and contrasted via these two rubrics. The complexity of human culture and behavior

makes it exceedingly difficult to formulate an explicative or predictive approach,

whether using anthropology, biology, psychology, or history; it is even more difficult

—if not impossible—to formulate approaches which can generate something

parsimonious like a law of physics. It is no mistake all three anthropologists

employed as exemplars of different attempts to make sense of human culture shared

an attraction to this discipline; they mirrored a belief in the validity of science

inherited from the Enlightenment, and unquestioningly sought to bring their ideas

about what relevant to study about culture scientifically.

It is also clear there is an epistemological conflict taking place within the

discipline. On one hand, there was a deep-seated mistrust of speculative theorization

based on too little empirical data; on the other was an equally deep mistrust of the

overuse of the analytical and critical approach engendered by the humanities, and by

relativistic studies of cultures with fundamentally different epistemological

perspectives. The theoretical shortcomings and blind spots of each respective camp

thus naturally engendered gravitation to certain influences, methods, subjects and

scopes to address the inevitable problems that arose in this struggle for

epistemological (and, thus, disciplinary) authority.

The desire for theoretical parsimony, a legacy of the enlightenment, was a

major factor in producing both what amounted to a disciplinary inferiority complex,

and a turn towards the natural sciences, particularly physics. It is thus quite

interesting to reflect on the work of Clifford Geertz (1973) which dates from the

period of his introduction into the veritable sanctum sanctorum of theoretical physics,

Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. It attempted, much as Boas once had, to

critically analyze the epistemological basis of science. One would think that the home

of major contributors to the field of quantum mechanics could cope with an

epistemological challenge of such a smaller magnitude, but the evidence of history

showed us just how uncomfortable the academy at large—to say nothing of the

layperson—is with problematizing epistemological issues in public. Geertz, by taking

this position, had taken anthropology full circle in its quest for authority. Then again,

perhaps it is more accurate to say that Geertz merely had the temerity to reach across

disciplines to the humanities as Boas (1974 [orig. 1919]) had indeed suggested; in the

end, it seems to be a matter open to interpretation.

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A. Barnard
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