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Accepted Paper:
Anthropology and Europe: the role of the RAI
David Shankland
(Royal Anthropological Institute)
Paper short abstract:
This paper begins with the basic consideration: what was the institutional framework for the founding of anthropology in Europe? It argues that associations and societies were of paramount importance in this respect.
Paper long abstract:
Modern anthropology has, almost by default, assumed that its rightful base is the university. This, however, has always been rather a simplification and, when we look at the history of anthropology, probably not justified at all. I argue in this paper that societies and associations were vital across Europe to the creation of anthropology as a discipline, and that they often had good contact with each other - thus we need to conceive of anthropology as a pan-European intellectual movement that crystalized in various centres which, however, were never entirely closed off from one another. The RAI is taken as a case study to illustrate these points.