Abstract

It is probably true that the greater number of contemporary American anthropologists feel that “theory” is a very dangerous kind of business which the careful anthropologist must be on his guard against. This statement represents, in the first instance, merely a crude induction from my experience in talking with professional anthropologists. It is, however, symptomatic that not until 1933 did a book by an American anthropologist include the word “theory” in its title. Only a single book published subsequently is explicitly given over to anthropological theory, and this avowedly concentrates upon the historical development of theories rather than upon a fresh and extended analysis of the more abstract aspects of anthropological thought. But because anthropology still painfully remembers the stomach-ache it got from the too easy generalizations of many nineteenth century “arm-chair ethnologists” is insufficient reason, it seems to me, for that almost morbid avoidance of theory which tends to produce acute indigestion from sheer bulk of unordered concrete observations. Landheer has with some justice commented