ABSTRACT
Before charting the evolution of the major institutions and currents of anthropology in the USA following the Second World War, it needs to be said that the American university scene was transformed by the passing of the GI Bill, which provided study bursaries for demobilized GIs. Kissinger took advantage of this to study anthropology, as did Geertz, Wolf, Murphy, Milton Barnett (1916–1994), Robert Manners (1913–1996), and many more. The GI Bill caused a sudden inflation in student numbers and opened up prestigious universities to those from modest social backgrounds. As Schneider writes: ‘with the GI Bill of Rights a large number of people came into the academic system who would not have been able to get in earlier’ (Schneider, 1995: 198). Geertz said that ‘without the GI Bill [I] probably wouldn’t have gone to college at all’ (quoted by Kuper, 1999: 76). A fuller testimony is provided by Murphy:
‘I arrived on the campus [of Columbia College] seven months after being discharged from the Navy [. . .] Higher education had always been an ultimate aspiration but a financial impossibility for me – and for millions of other products of the Depression. The GI Bill opened college education to us, and we entered the universities like a horde of barbarians. For the first time in the history of this country, higher education became available to the excluded, the unwashed, the outsiders, the undesirables. College was not longer a middle class monopoly, and with this breaching of class barriers, ethnic and racial walls also began to crumble. Out of this came the most remarkable spurt of class mobility ever experienced anywhere [. . .]. As for anthropology, the first time I ever heard of the subject was in 1947, when I asked a friend to recommend a course that would be easy yet interesting’
(Murphy, The Body Silent, London: Dent, 1987, pp. 129–30).