Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965

HThis book describes how a small group of anthropologists shaped American thought from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s.

John S. Gilkeson (Author)

9781107685765, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 July 2014

298 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

"Gilkeson’s book is a forceful reminder of just how that process worked among American anthropologists during the interwar period of 1919 to 1941." -Terry A. Barnhart, The Journal of American History

This book examines the intersection of cultural anthropology and American cultural nationalism from 1886, when Franz Boas left Germany for the United States, until 1965, when the National Endowment for the Humanities was established. Five chapters trace the development within academic anthropology of the concepts of culture, social class, national character, value, and civilization, and their dissemination to non-anthropologists. As Americans came to think of culture anthropologically, as a 'complex whole' far broader and more inclusive than Matthew Arnold's 'the best which has been thought and said', so, too, did they come to see American communities as stratified into social classes distinguished by their subcultures; to attribute the making of the American character to socialization rather than birth; to locate the distinctiveness of American culture in its unconscious canons of choice; and to view American culture and civilization in a global perspective.

Introduction
1. Culture in the American grain
2. Social class in the ethnography of the American scene
3. The psychology of culture and the American character
4. The drift of American values
5. America as a civilization.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]