ABSTRACT
The idea of a paradigm as delineated by Thomas Kuhn helps in understanding the historical trajectory of the subject matter and research interests of political anthropologists since the subfield developed over the last half of the twentieth century. The subject matter of political anthropology has been explored in five paradigms. These include the structural-functional paradigm (or simply functionalism), the processual paradigm, the venerable paradigms of political economy and political evolution, and the arguable paradigm of postmodernism. Postmodernism may also be conceived as a literary genre, although the attributes that distinguish genres are very similar to those of scientific paradigms. In the first half of the twentieth century, structural-functionalism, derived largely from the work of Bronislaw Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, engaged the energies of most British social anthropologists. In political anthropology, the paradigms of political economy and political evolution overlap methodologically. Excursions by political anthropologists into political economy retain the proposition that mutually implicates economics and politics in social processes.
