Paper short abstract:

This paper concentrates on the creation of separate fields of anthropological enquiry in the first half of the twentieth century, and reflects upon the lessons that this can teach us in the present day.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines anthropology and its creation as a modern discipline at the turn of the nineteenth century and later, attempting to look at internal disagreements and arguments which led to fission, as well as the impulses which led toward attempts to keep it together. My perspective is influenced by my present position as Director of the RAI, as well as by research conducted in Oxford as Humfrey Wanley Bodleian Visiting Fellow. I certainly believe that treating anthropology as a single discipline far outweighs any disadvantages that such a perspective may hold, all the more so if one takes into account the kind of questions that were being asked as it began to divide.