ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief account of when and under what circumstances the momentous changes that produced a radically different discipline began. It provides trends and crucial moments in this historic shift by looking at programs of the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association from 1955 to 1974. The chapter describes teaching a linguistics course which treats linguistic theory as ideology serving imperialism" and specifically, "sociolinguistic theory as a racist science; grammatical theory as a response to 'picturesque' constructions". It argues that current American cultural anthropology has moved very—very—far from its disciplinary, intellectual, and institutional origins in the past forty-five years, and that a major tendency in this newer anthropology is a preoccupation with evil in culture and society. The chapter focuses on both the practice of cultural anthropology and an ethos, a mentalite, a mind-set, a general disposition.
