ABSTRACT
Morgan has been a controversial figure in anthropology, in social philosophy, and in political theory for nearly a century. A large and varied literature has accumulated concerning him and his theories. I have suggested that it would be profitable to take a fresh and unprejudiced look at his major treatises, ignoring his speculative hypotheses and making allowance for the backward state of ethnographical field research in his day. To do this it is necessary to put aside the critical, exegetical, and expository literature to which I have previously referred, and begin from the beginning. I say this in no spirit of disparagement of the many eminent scholars who have contributed to this literature, for, as stands to reason, some of my conclusions have been anticipated by them. My main thesis, however, has, I believe, hitherto escaped adequate recognition. I claim that Morgan's substantive discoveries and intuitively elaborated methods of analysis constituted the foundations of what we now call structural theory in social anthropology. I maintain that the analytical procedure implicit in his work foreshadowed and stimulated, in a striking manner, the development of theory which we owe above all to the lead given by Radcliffe-Brown. The proof, as I hope to show, lies in the Morganian sources.
