The Reanimation of the Primitive: Fin-De-Siècle Ethnographic Discourse in Western Europe

Texts that offer a survey of the primitive as a concept are Lovejoy A. O. Boas George , Primitivism and related ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), Hodgen Margaret , Early anthropology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), and Manuel Frank , The eighteenth century confronts the gods (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

Most of the individuals treated in this article came from a literary background, or had received a classical literary education. This would suggest that Wolf Lepenies's argument, that sociology vacillates between a more literary and more positivistic modality, would apply equally well to the whole of anthropology, of which ethnography was the more literary moment: Between literature and science: The rise of sociology (Cambridge, 1988). Foucault, in the later chapters of The order of things (New York, 1970), offers a more intricate model of the human sciences as existing in a state of tension between reductivist and transcendent modalities. This is suggestive when considering, for example, the coexistence of craniometry and kinship studies within a single discipline.

The modernism of the human sciences is the theme of a sophisticated collection of essays edited by Ross Dorothy , Modernist impulses in the human sciences 1870–1930 (Baltimore, 1994). Curiously, this collection lacks a discussion of either ethnography or linguistics. The present paper is conceived as a partial corrective to that oversight, and an acknowledgment of the importance of the questions raised therein. The problem of historicism and its rejection are also central to the argument framed in Ross Dorothy , The origins of American social science (Cambridge, 1991), a text more useful for readers unfamiliar with the frequent linking of historicism and modernism in discussions of the fin-de-siècle.

Schorske Carl E. , Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and culture (New York, 1981), p. xvii.

van Gennep Arnold , Titres et travaux [1911], cited in Belmont Nicole , Arnold van Gennep: The creator of French ethnography, transl. by Coltman Derek (Chicago, 1979), 115.

Schorske's text, op. cit. (ref. 4), is exemplary of this. So, also, is the other classic interpretation of the period, H. Stuart Hughes's Consciousness and society: The reorientation of European social thought 1890–1930 , rev. edn (New York, 1977). This inversion is very common in historiography of a leftist inclination, though not exclusively. See, for example, Hobsbawm Eric : “A new generation of thinkers … rediscovered irrational elements … through anthropology in primitive peoples …”, from “Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870–1914”, in Hobsbawm Eric Ranger Terence (eds), The invention of tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 263–307, p. 268. George Stocking grants Edwardian anthropologists such as Frazer J. G. Marett R. R. a heightened sensitivity to “irrational forces stirring beneath the surface of Edwardian society”: After Tylor: British social anthropology 1888–1951 (Madison, 1995), 170. The metaphor is transposed directly from the period in question.

Many sources have been identified as impetus for the transition in ethnographic discourse from evolution to function: The German Kulturkreis school of geographical ethnography, Franz Boas and the “culture concept”, Durkheimian sociology, or the diffusionist school of Rivers W. H. R. , While the influence of each of these can be established, none alone was responsible for the shift in question. Kuklick sees the First World War as the watershed event capable of ushering in such a change: The savage within: The social history of British anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, 1991). I argue that the shift was precipitated well before. A different way of accounting for the transition is with recourse to improved methods, i.e., field research. Johannes Fabian (Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object (New York, 1983)), otherwise roundly critical of the anthropological enterprise, nonetheless posits routinized fieldwork as the one site of anthropological authenticity, from which modern anthropology was born early in this century, and from which it may be rehabilitated. I argue that the prescription of fieldwork was one component of a model itself genetically independent of fieldwork. What is most interesting is that the advent of modernity in anthropological thought is described using the language of Saussurian linguistics (synchronic/diachronic), without this prompting an investigation into the uncanny parallelism of linguistic and ethnographic categories dating from the same period. See Stocking George , Victorian anthropology (New York, 1987), “A prospective retrospect”.

“New England superstitions”, The folk-lore journal, ii (1884), 23.

Gunning Catherine , “Queries”, Folk-lore record, i (1878), 246.

Lang Andrew , The book of dreams and ghosts ([1897]; London, 1899), p. ix.

Though interested mostly in dispensing with the mystery of the primitive, archaeological ethnography was not impervious to the temptations of occultism. Tylor Lang Marillier Léon (Marcel Mauss's mentor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études) all dallied with the Society for Psychical Research.

Gomme G. L. , Folk-lore relics of early village life (London, 1883), 11–12.

The usage “culture fossils” is Alfred Nutt's: Nutt Alfred , “Recent archaeological research, no. II”, The archaeological review, iii (1889), 73–88, p. 86.

See Bowler Peter J. , The invention of progress: The Victorians and the past (Cambridge, 1989), chap. 3.

Hacking Ian , The social construction of what? (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).

Tylor Edward B. , Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom, i, 2nd edn (London, 1873), 136, 158.

Hartland Sidney , “Folk-tale section”, International Folk-Lore Congress. Papers and discussions (London, 1891), 15–39. See also Brantlinger Patrick , ‘“Dying races’: Rationalizing genocide in the nineteenth century”, in Pieterse Jan Nederveen Parekh Bhikhu (eds), The decolonization of imagination: Culture, knowledge and power (London, 1995), 43–56.

Frazer James , “The scope of social anthropology” [1908], in Psyche's task: A discourse concerning the influence of superstition on the growth of institutions, 2nd edn (London, 1913), 159–76, p. 174.

Hartland Sidney , “Presidential Address”, Folklore, xi (1900), 52–80, pp. 78–79.

Henderson William , Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the Borders. A new edition with many additional notes (London, 1879), i, p. vii.

Tylor , Primitive culture (ref. 16), 24.

Lang Andrew , “President's Address”, International Folk-Lore Congress. Papers and discussions (London, 1891), 1–12, p. 8.

See Leopold Joan , Culture in comparative perspective: E. B. Tylor and the making of primitive culture (Berlin, 1980).

Tylor Edward B. , “Anthropology and archaeology”, The archaeological review, i (1888), 6–7, p. 6.

Gomme G. L. , “Editorial note”, The archaeological review, i (1888), 1–5, p. 3.

Ibid., 4.

See Dorson Richard M. , The British folklorists: A history (London, 1968).

Nutt , op. cit. (ref. 13), 79.

Frazer James , quoted in Hyman Stanley , The tangled bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as imaginative writers (New York, 1962), 161.

Frazer James , quoted, ibid., 204.

Letter of Arnold van Gennep to James Frazer, 28 October 1908, Box 35, item 352, Trinity College Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Gomme G. L. , “The President's Address”, Folklore, iii (1892), 1–25, p. 11.

Ibid., 3.

Hartland Sidney , “Suggestions for the systematic collection of the folk-lore of Gloucestershire”, in County folk-lore. Printed extracts no. 1, Gloucestershire, ed. by Hartland Sidney (London, 1892), 3–8, p. 5.

Quoted in Dorson , The British folklorists (ref. 27), 223.

Frazer , “The scope of anthropology” [1908], in Psyche's task (ref. 18), 175–6.

Frazer , “The belief in immortality” [1913], quoted in Hyman, The tangled bank (ref. 29), 174.

Temple Richard Sir , “Administrative value of anthropology”, Report of the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Birmingham. Section H (London, 1913), 613–23, p. 619.

Brabrook E. B. , “Presidential Address”, Report of the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bristol. Section H (London, 1898), 999–1010, p. 1009.

This vision of cultural improvement through contact was predominant among urban British philanthropists through the 1880s. The moral equivalent of ethnographic “tact” was called for from those concerned to bring “civilization” to the “lower classes”. See Jones Gareth Stedman , Outcast London: A study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society (New York, 1971). See also the writings of Samuel Barnett on the aims and ideals of the British “settlement movement”.

van Gennep Arnold , Les demi-savants: Esthétique comparée; linguistique; pathologie végétale; biologie; ethnographie; folklore; épigraphie; anthropométrie; critique littéraire; la synthèse, 2nd edn (Paris, 1911), 7.

Radcliffe-Brown , quoted in Kuper Adam (ed.), “Radcliffe-Brown and Rivers: A correspondence”, Canberra anthropology, xi (1988), 49–81, p. 52.

Richards Thomas , The imperial archive: Knowledge and the fantasy of empire (London, 1993).

Pollock Frederick Sir , “Institution and custom section”, in International Folk-Lore Congress (ref. 17), 261–6, p. 265.

Hartland , “Presidential Address” (ref. 19), 57.

Marett R. R. , “Presidential Address”, Folklore, xxv (1914), 12–33, p. 18.

Maine Henry Sir , “India”, in Ward Thomas Humphry (ed.), The reign of Queen Victoria: A survey of fifty years of progress (2 vols, London, 1887), i, 460–528, p. 527.

Crooke W. , “Section H. Anthropology”, in Report of the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bristol (London, 1910), 714–26, p. 725.

Gomme , “President's Address” (ref. 32), 3, 2.

van Gennep Arnold , Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar: Étude déscriptive et théorique (Paris, 1904), 10.

Marett R. R. , Anthropology (New York, 1911), 19–20.

Burne Charlotte Sophia , “Presidential Address”, Folklore, xxi (1910), 14–36, p. 17.

Fauconnet Paul Mauss Marcel , “Sociologie”, in La grande encyclopédie: Inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres et des arts, par une société de savants et de gens de lettres, xxx (Paris, n.d.), 165–76, p. 175.

Mauss Marcel Lévy Isidore , “Introduction”, in de la Saussaye Chantepie , Manuel d'histoire des religions (Paris, 1904), pp. xi–xii.

van Gennep Arnold , “Les légendes des saints”, in Religions, moeurs, et légendes, i (Paris, 1908), 108–21, p. 114.

Crooke W. , “Presidential Address”, Folklore, xxiii (1912), 14–32, p. 14.

Mauss Lévy , “Introduction” (ref. 54), pp. xi–xii.

Marett , Anthropology (ref. 51), 12, 14–15.

Ibid., 153.

Lévi-Strauss , writing on Durkheim's method, felt that for Durkheim “the historical and the functional approaches are equally important, but must be used independently”. For, although “we find here [in The elementary forms of the religious life] a confusion between the historical and the logical points of view; between the quest for origins and the discovery of functions, I would add that Durkheim's failure to provide a formal rule for the articulation of the two approaches does not diminish the fact that even in his most apparently evolutionary writings, synchronic analysis stands apart and upon its own logical foundation”. Lévi-Strauss Claude , “French sociology”, in Gurvitch Georges (ed.), Twentieth century sociology (New York, 1946), 503–37, p. 516.

Radcliffe-Brown, unpublished manuscript, “The study of social institutions”, Haddon Collection, Box 131, 12086, University Library, Cambridge. For Radcliffe-Brown's intellectual relation to Rivers on these questions, see Langham Ian , The building of Cambridge Social Anthropology: W. H. R. Rivers and his Cambridge disciples in the development of kinship studies, 1898–1931 (Dordrecht, 1981). For the influence of Durkheim on Radcliffe-Brown, and its timing in his career, see the documents edited by Stocking George , “Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Brown: Comparative Sociology at Cambridge in 1910”, and his article “Radcliffe-Brown and British Social Anthropology”, both in Stocking George (ed.), Functionalism historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology (Madison, 1984), 106–30, 131–91 respectively.

Marett , “Presidential Address” (ref. 46), 21, 24.

Ibid., 20, 21.

Ibid., 27.

van Gennep Arnold , “Ethnographie, folklore”, Mercure de France, lxx (1907), 699–703, p. 700.

van Gennep Arnold , “Rémarques sur l'ethnographie”, Religions, moeurs, et légendes, iv (1911), 9–31, p. 27.

Charles-Brun Jean , Le régionalisme, 2nd edn (Paris, 1911), 68.

Essential for an overview of late nineteenth-century linguistic thought is Amsterdamska Olga , Schools of thought: The development of linguistics from Bopp to Saussure (Dordrecht, 1987). Useful but less directly related to this article are the works of Hans Aarsleff.

See the linguistic reviews written by Meillet for L'Année sociologique, beginning in 1900.

Meillet Antoine , L'État actuel des études de linguistique générale: Léçon d'ouverture du cours de grammaire comparée au Collège de France (Paris, 1906), 24–25.

Ibid., 13–14.

Ibid., 29.

Frazer James , “Howitt and Fison”, Folklore, xx (1909), 144–80, p. 153.

Ibid., 151.

Marett R. R. , “Religion”, in Notes and queries on anthropology, 4th edn, ed. by Freire-Marreco Barbara Myres John Linton (London, 1912), 247–62, p. 258.

Marett , “Presidential Address” (ref. 46), 22.

Quoted in Kuper Adam , Anthropologists and anthropology: The British School, 1922–1972 (London, 1973), 31.

Marett , “Presidential Address” (ref. 46), 22.

Quoted in Kuper (ed.), “Radcliffe-Brown and Rivers” (ref. 42), 52.

van Gennep Arnold , “Ethnographie, folklore”, Mercure de France, lxxviii (1909), 507–11, p. 507.

van Gennep Arnold , “De la méthode dans l'étude des rites et des mythes”, in Religions, moeurs, et légendes, iv (1911), 47–81, p. 61.

Baldwin Spencer to James Frazer, 7 June 1903; Baldwin Spencer to James Frazer, 7 June 1902, Sir Baldwin Spencer Papers, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Marett R. R. , “The present state of anthropology”, The Athenaeum, no. 4298 (12 March 1910), 299–300, p. 299.

Gaster Moses , “Presidential Address”, Folklore, xx (1909), 12–31, p. 28.

Frazer James , The Golden Bough: A study in magic and religion. A new abridgement from the second and third editions, ed. by Fraser Robert (London, 1994), 54.

Hartland Edwin Sidney , Folklore: What is it and what is the good of it?, 2nd edn (London, 1904), 39.

Marett R. R. , “A programme”, The economic review, i (1891), 1–3, p. 1.

Masterman C. F. G. , The heart of empire (1901; fascimile reprint, Brighton, Sussex, 1973), p. ix; Burne Charlotte Sophia , “Presidential Address” (ref. 52), 33.

Crooke , “Section H. Anthropology” (ref. 48), 724.

Quoted in Jones Roderick , “The black peril in South Africa”, Nineteenth century, lv (1904), 712–23, p. 712.