ABSTRACT
The growth and transformation of academic activity from the late 1940s onward were fueled mostly by the Cold War expenditures that provided fellowships and research funds and incentives. Anthropologists grappled with the effects of decolonization and political instability in their own society; Marxist analyses also reappeared after being forced underground in the 1950s. The rising tensions of the Cold War led the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations to consider carefully the relation between their overseas programs and the foreign policy objectives of the United States government. The optimism that greeted the end of the Second World War faded quickly in the United States and was replaced by the repressive atmosphere of the Cold War. The anti-communist sentiments manifested in McCarthyism and fueled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation narrowed both the political culture of the country and the traditions of social theory that were discussed in colleges and universities from the late 1940s onward.
