THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 1931 TO 1937, AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

The dissertation was prompted by the failure of anthropology, in the last eighty years, to formulate a unified science of human behavior. In an effort to account for the factionalism and diversity of opinion that has informed the discipline, I have examined the notion--"schools of thought". Given problems of time and space, I have limited the investigation to particular schools and to a particular time--the early years of professionalism in the United States. My choice of time and place was facilitated by a chance reading of Leslie White's monograph, "The Social Organization of Ethnological Theory". Taking White's assertions about the departments at Columbia University and the University of Chicago as my cue, I have examined the academic institutionalization of anthropology at those two institutions during the period suggested by White - the Depression years (the thirties).;I have attempted to examine what White calls the "social organization" of ethnological theory in order to explain the quality and quantity of research and theory produced by teachers and graduate students attached to these two institutions. Specific emphasis is given to those students who studied with Radcliffe-Brown and Robert Redfield in the years 1931 to 1937 and those who worked under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict during the same period. Ultimately, my investigation suggests that Dr. White's model is not adequate historically. There was no Boasian school of thought at Columbia nor was there a Radcliffe-Brown manner of thinking in Chicago work. Nevertheless, the model is useful as a reference point in explaining this fact. Given the particular historical situations of Columbia and Chicago during the 1930's, schools might have formed. My study explains why the aforementioned model does not fit the facts.