ABSTRACT
The pacification of the exotic world was completed a few years after the end of the First World War, and from this moment missionaries were to be found everywhere in the world, often providing support for ethnological research. It was at this time that American anthropology gained access to newly acquired Pacific islands, which contained ‘resolutely’ primitive populations unlike the acculturated American Indians who had hitherto been its sole object of study. In the words of Lévi-Strauss, ‘Ethnology has only consciously been practised for one century and will only survive for one more century. One can predict that in the twenty-first century the human race will be all but unified [...] During the course of two centuries and two centuries only, one type of humanity will be succeeded by another’ (Entretiens radiophoniques avec Georges Charbonnier, 1959). This verdict defines the origins of ethnology, and great emphasis was placed during this period on the need to study primitive societies before they disappeared (Mead, Letters from the Field, New York: Harper, 1977). This spirit was dominant until the eve of the Second World War, in which American anthropologists participated actively (R. L. Beals, ‘Anthropology during the War and After: Memorandum Prepared by the Committee on War Service of Anthropologists, Division of Anthropology and Psychology, National Research Council’, 1943). With the coming of peace, research focused increasingly on the social dynamics caused by colonization and by the acculturation process, although research on the latter had in fact already been initiated by Linton, Herskovits and Redfield in a memorandum of 1936.
