British Anthropology at the End of Empire : the Rise and Fall of the Colonial Social Science Research Council, 1944-1962

Abstract

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Anthropology and Business: Influence and Interests

“…The Memorial also courted Malinowski as an individual, inviting him to visit the United States in 1926, during which visit Malinowski established his own relationships with Foundation personnel (Goody 1995:13). Malinowski's views regarding the conduct of social science with respect to empiricism and the relationship to policy were closely aligned with those of Ruml and his foundation colleagues, and they contrasted with the perspectives of other leading anthropologists at the time, including those in Britain and the United States (e.g., Radcliffe-Brown and other anthropologists involved in the American Anthropological Associated [Goody 1995, Stocking 1995, Mills 2002). The convergence of Malinowski's energetic pursuit of Rockefeller funding for his own research and the timing of the Memorial's consolidation into the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible for the Foundation to fund Malinowski's proposal as a matching grant to the African Institute (Stocking 1995:398-401), not as part of the LSE block grant.…”

“…If the framework of our early history is expanded to include its financing -where the funding came from, what motivated its trajectory, how funding policies emerged and what they signified intellectually -some interesting issues emerge that have bearing upon the present. The role of Rockefeller philanthropy in the history of anthropology has been discussed previously (Stocking 1995, Goody 1995, Mills 2002; however these accounts do not examine the background against which the Rockefeller Foundation made decisions as an organization, nor do they fully explore the implications of the funding patterns in anthropology, including their consequences for anthropological practice.…”

“…The position taken by the Oxford anthropologists appeared reasonable to them at the time, although in retrospect it seems that regardless of whether or not they agreed to work on colonial "problems", they would have been complicit in the agenda of the British colonial State by accepting its funding, conducting research in the colonial arena, and thereby legitimizing State structures through the development of anthropological theory (Macdonald 2001, Mills 2002.…”

“…The British government was under increasing pressure from the United States to demonstrate that its colonies were developing economically, and the CSSRC intended to direct its research agenda toward a framework to further efforts in this area (Mills 2002). Anthropologists at the London School of Economics (e.g., Firth and Richards) were reformers who believed that they could work in cooperation with colonial bureaucrats to improve the situation in the colonies for subject peoples.…”

“…Probably the most important advantage is temporal distance that permits placement of our subject in a larger historical and social context, and time for deeper understanding. There have been numerous studies by historians and members of ours and other disciplines on the business elites and academic disciplines of that era, including re-studies of archival and experimental records (e.g., Kohler 1978;Bulmer and Bulmer 1981;Kohler 1987;Gillespie 1991;Kuklick 1991;Goody 1995;Stocking 1995;Mills 2002Mills , 2006. These provide multiple points of view on the context and role of anthropology and its relationship to business and other disciplines.…”