ANTROPOLOGIENS POTENS I ALER ETTER DEN PRIMITIVES DØD

Resumé

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Anthropology

and the Death of the Primitive

Although anthropologists for generations

have studied complex societies, the

disciplinary shift in focus from “traditional”

to “modem” phenomena has not as yet

penetrated anthropologists’ way of teaching

and theorizing. Even if a majority of anthropologists

now study people and places that

are deeply interconnected with the rest of the

world, the paradigmatic examples of anthropological

research are still the classic ones,

from Malinowski to Evans-Pritchard and

Douglas. This is not necessarily due merely

to conservatism in the discipline, but could

also indicate that the study of what was at the

time perceived as “radical Othemess”,

localized to societies presumed to be static

and isolated, was, if empirically misleading,

then exceptionally fruitful in generating

models and ideas pertaining to society and

culture. A question discussed in the article is

thus whether current work on globalization,

networks, cultural creolization et cetera (in

which the author himself is engaged), has the

same Creative potential as the study of

“primitive” society - or whether the very

craft of anthropology depends on an image

of “radical Othemess”.