10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5779
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Frederico Delgado Rosa, Han Vermeulen, eds, Ethnographers before Malinowski. Pioneers of anthropological fieldwork, 1870‒1922, New York-Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2022, pp. XVIII + 522
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2023/05/10
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5779
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2239-625X
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148
urn:nbn:it:unica-29233
Frederico Delgado Rosa, Han Vermeulen, eds, Ethnographers before Malinowski. Pioneers of anthropological fieldwork, 1870‒1922, New York-Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2022, pp. XVIII + 522
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                                         2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 145-148




                                                                           Recensioni

Frederico Delgado Rosa, Han Vermeulen (eds) | Ethnographers before Malinowski.
Pioneers of anthropological fieldwork 1870–1922, New York-Oxford, Berghahn
Books, 2022, pp. XVIII + 522.




   This volume is a recent product of HOAN (History of Anthropology Net-
work), which in its turn is one of the most efficient among the networks of
EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists). In a way, the book
had been announced by a panel with the same name held at the 16th EASA
Conference, Lisbon, on July 21, 2020: P001 “Ethnographers before Malinows-
ki”, with Christine Laurière and Frederico Delgado Rosa as convenors, plus
Han F. Vermeulen as discussant. “The panel’s idea is to challenge the unfound-
ed prejudice that ethnographies before Malinowski were mostly travelogues,
expeditionary surveys, or defective and fragmentary ethnographic descrip-
tions by unqualified amateurs”. Excerpted from the “Long abstract” of the
workshop, the message from these words may be rediscovered in the editors’
argumentation in support of their enterprise. Let us quote from the end of the
“Introduction” to the present volume: “Therefore, it is time to render more
visible the pre-Malinowskian side of the coin, by opening the ethnographic
archive and bringing earlier ethnographies from the margins to the center of
anthropology’s history” (p. 31).
   Before any comment about the content of the book a preliminary question
arises. It regards the two temporal points of reference chosen for determining
the historical interval: why 1870 and 1922? Without sophisticated arguments,
Rosa and Vermeulen explain:
      For chronological coherence, (...) our intent is to explore ethnographic texts
      produced from ca. 1870 on, i.e, after Tylor, in creative ways that bring them
      nearer to the twentieth century up to the year when Argonauts of the Western
      Pacific and The Andaman Islanders were published (“Introduction”, p. 30 – all
      italics in original).



This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Gheorghiță Geană
2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 145-148.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5779
146        F. Delgado Rosa, H. Vermeulen (eds) | Ethnographers before Malinowski

   This fragment contains the answer to the twofold question above. Suppos-
edly, 1870 has been chosen for being in immediate proximity to 1871, the year
when Edward B. Tylor published his Primitive Culture – the work where the con-
cept of culture received for the first time a proper anthropological definition. As
to the second year in question, it is clear that the two editorial landmarks just
mentioned – one by Malinowski and the other by Radcliffe-Brown – appeared,
both of them, in 1922, a reason for which Vermeulen and Rosa call this year “The
Annus Mirabilis of British Social Anthropology” (“Conclusion”, pp. 451-453).
   The book is captivating from beginning to end. The content consists in a
series of case studies destined to illustrate the editors’ strategy.
   The attention paid by editors to female ethnographers is praiseworthy.
The book included special chapters about outstanding women such as Katie
Langloh Parker, Alice C. Fletcher and Maria Czaplicka (presented by Barbara
Chambers Dawson, Joanna Cohan Scherer and Grażina Kubica, respectively).
Promptly, the figures of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead (“the Bacon of
anthropology”, as Stephen Toulmin called the latter) – who represented this
science at its highest degree of prestige – come unavoidably to our mind.
   A problematic subject matter is the rehabilitation of “armchair anthropol-
ogy”. Strictly speaking, it is improper to label Marcel Mauss as an armchair
anthropologist, as Eriksen (p. xvii), and Rosa and Vermeulen (p. 19) do. His
activity cannot even be characterized as “philosophical anthropology”, a
domain in which genuine philosophers like Max Scheler or Ernst Cassirer
(among his contemporaries) excelled (to leave aside Immanuel Kant with his
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht). Mauss’ The Gift is rightly a classic
work, but its author was rather a hermeneutic ethnographical mind than a
scientific practitioner of anthropology. In fact, the so-called “armchair an-
thropology” was an initial phase in the development of this discipline. Once
fieldwork became a defining feature of the canon of anthropological research,
the “armchair method” remained a manner for cultivating certain forms of
anthropological rhetoric, namely: philosophical, theological, or (literary-)
artistic anthropology (and, naturally, the history of domain). As to the rigor-
ously scientific paradigm, field research still counts today as a valid, essential
and indispensable component of it. To quote Charles Seligman: “Field re-
search in anthropology is what the blood of martyrs is to the Church” (cf.
George Stocking, Jr., After Tylor, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 115).
   The title of the present book evokes automatically another volume (Before
Boas, by Han F. Vermeulen, Lincoln & London, University of Nebraska Press,



2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 145-148
F. Delgado Rosa, H. Vermeulen (eds) | Ethnographers before Malinowski                    147

2015). Both volumes are impressive, each in its own way. Perhaps the main dif-
ference consists in the role assigned to the two central figures: in Vermeulen’s
book Boas appeared as a very distant reference point, a guiding beacon from
afar; by contrast, in the book here discussed, Malinowski’s shadow is present
at every step. The deepest challenge induced by the ethnographical contri-
butions here revealed is that they incorporate some procedures – fieldwork,
intensive research, participant observation – usually considered as Malinows-
kian priorities. Thus, correlatively with the existence of such writings in the
interval 1870–1922, the editors’ purpose seems to be the re-evaluation of
Malinowski’s position in the history of anthropology. So, after revisiting the
so-called “revolution in anthropology” (Ian Charles Jarvie, Routledge, 1964),
the editors conclude (right at the end):
     Within such a complex “pre-Malinowskian” world, we suggest surpassing
     preconceived ideas on the irrelevance of nineteenth- and early twentieth-
     century ethnographers and focus on their texts, which bring out the plurality
     in anthropological writing. Before reproducing the hasty judgment that
     such ethnographic accounts were mostly miscellaneous, dry compilations
     of odds and ends, we should get back to reading them with an open mind
     (“Conclusion”, p. 464).

  More radical in putting the question (“What, then, is left of the so-called
Malinowskian revolution?”) and categorical in formulating his answer had
been Thomas Hylland Eriksen at the beginning of the volume:
     For one thing, Malinowski was a far better writer than his predecessors. […] His
     field methodology was also clearly formulated, systematically and succinctly
     laid out. His emphasis on participant observation also marked a departure from
     Westermarck and Rivers, although it remains an open question to what extent
     later ethnographers actually participated in everyday life” (“Foreword”, p. xvi).

    With simple words, Eriksen revealed some distinctive merits of Bronislaw
Malinowski. However, other significant achievements should be added. Let us
skip over his sensational A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967), as well
as over his influential teaching experience. In exchange, let us underline that
if the main methodological aspects of his activity are acknowledged, his vir-
tues as a theoretician are generally overlooked. Indeed, it is not only for the
sake of practical efficiency that he devised his methods, but equally for the
sake of their theoretical relevance. As it was asserted (irrefutably): “Clearly,
Malinowski’s great contribution was as an exemplar of ethnographic method.
Yet his method carried a theoretical and even a moral charge” (Adam Kuper,
Anthropology and Anthropologists, 1996, p. 34). While Radcliffe-Brown consid-
ered social anthropology as a branch of comparative sociology dealing with

                                       2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 145-148
148        F. Delgado Rosa, H. Vermeulen (eds) | Ethnographers before Malinowski

primitive societies, Malinowski wrote a study on “culture” as anthropological
concept (A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays, 1944), i.e. he practiced
anthropology qua... anthropology!
   To conclude, similarly to a sociopolitical revolution which does not appear
as a bolt from the blue but is anticipated in one way or another, the ethnogra-
phies before Malinowski (lacking the prompt integration into their Zeitgeist!)
preceded the certified revolution in anthropology linked with this outstanding
scientist. In short, this volume constitutes an actual editorial event. It fills
important gaps into an overall picture, but it does not erode the protagonist’s
figure; on the contrary, his creative dimensions are pointed out all the better.

                                                               Gheorghiță Geană
                                                           University of Bucharest
                                               gheorghita_geana2003@yahoo.com




2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 145-148
