Psychological Anthropology

Abstract

Applying the term "psychological anthropology" to a special subfi eld of ethnology used to make more sense than it does now. To be sure, there has always been a liberal amount of psychological thinking-either implicit or explicit-throughout the theo retical literature on the evolution and nature of man, but most ethnologists used to hope they could identify biological, ecological, and cultural laws that operated-or that could be studied-independently of the workings of the human mind. This hope has faded for most of us in the last decade or two, due especially in the United States to large-scale government support of our science.One reason for this trend has been the necessity-imposed by granting agency standards-of a clearer sense of problem. Whether we are interested in technology or in religion, we are required to anticipate the questions of interdisciplinary review committees about "overlooked variables." Since psychologists greatly outnumber anthropologists on most committees (as in the universe), there are almost certain to be some questions about psychology. Another reason has been our very obvious failure to develop a predictive science of man of the sort that public sponsors would like ideally to see. Rather than reject the possibility of a predictive science, and rather than scrap our theories altogether, we are tempted to look for complications at the level of psychology that might indicate where we have missed the mark. If, for example, we fi nd that some individuals and communities are greatly upset and disorganized by rapid social change, and others of the same cultural type are not, we become more curious about cognitive, situational, and personality variables (cf 20, 62, 93). Whether or not this is the most productive direction for anthropology to take, it has the happy result of generating a great many researchable questions.At any rate, we have been thrown into competition with psychologists and sociol ogists for research funds, and have had to become much more self conscious about our methods. We have seen how difficult it is to get two or more subjects, or two or more observers, to agree on a description of anything, much less an interpretation of it (cf 13,69). We have become more aware that observing and participating are themselves very complex and poorly understood processes of perception, thinking 103 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1977.6:103-119. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by Michigan State University Library on 02/04/15. For personal use only.Quick links to online content Further ANNUAL REVIEWS

Toward a Cultural Anthropology of Disability and Rehabilitation

“…and Malinowski (a founder of British functionalism) were all students of Wundt (Bock, 1999). As Kiefer (1977) noted, &dquo;Most ethnologists used to hope they could identify biological, ecological, and cultural laws that operatedor that could be studied-independently of the workings of the human mind. This hope has faded for most of us in the last decade or two&dquo; (p. 103).…”

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