ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the wholesale shift in the orientation of graduate training toward the kinds of circumstances in which most anthropologists work. In the 1950s, academic anthropologists mostly withdrew from this kind of work. The reason, according to John Bennett, was a resurgent interest among them in building grand theory. Anthropology’s history for us therefore consists of when, where, and how it was put to work. Among the many claims anthropologists made, some worked at one time and another, others never worked or not for long, and in any case, what worked and what did were hardly at the disposition of the anthropologists. Colonial administrators judged anthropology’s knowledge of kinship and ritual esoteric, and the American government turned away from ethnographic research and survey.
