This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology. The authors provide summaries of 'Enlightenment', 'Romantic' and 'Victorian' anthropology, from the cultural theories of Morgan and Taylor to the often neglected contributions of German scholars. The ambiguous relationship between anthropology and national cultures is also considered. The book provides an unparalleled account of theoretical developments in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, including functionalism, structuralism, hermeneutics, neo-Marxism and discourse analysis. There are brief biographies of major anthropologists and coverage of key debates including totemism, kinship and globalisation. This essential text on anthropology is highly engaging, authoritative and suitable for students at all levels.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. He is the author of numerous classics of anthropology, including Small Places, Large Issues - 4th Edition (Pluto, 2015) and What is Anthropology? - 2nd Edition (Pluto, 2017).

Finn Sivert Nielsen worked in the anthropology departments at the University of Tromso and the University of Copenhagen. He is a contributor to A History of Anthropology (Pluto, 2013).

Series preface Preface 1. Proto-Anthropology Introduction Herodotus and other Greeks After Antiquity The European Conquests and their Impact Why All This is not Quite Anthropology Yet The Enlightenment Romanticism 2. Victorians, Germans and a Frenchman Introduction Evolutionism and Cultural History Morgan Marx Bastian and the German Tradition Tylor and Other Victorians The Golden Bough and the Torres Expedition German Diffusionism The New Sociology Durkheim Weber 3. Four Founding Fathers Introduction The Founding Fathers and their Projects Malinowski and the Trobriand Islanders Radcliffe-Brown's Natural Science of Society Boas and Historical Particularism Mauss and the Total Social Prestation Anthropology in 1930: Parallels and Divergences 4. Expansion and Institutionalisation Introduction A Marginal Discipline? Oxford and LSE, Columbia and Chicago The Dakar-Djibouti Expedition Culture and Personality Cultural History Ethnolinguistics The Chicago School 'Kinshipology' Functionalism's Last Stand Some British Outsiders 5. Forms of Change Introduction Neo-evolutionism and Cultural Ecology Formalism and Substativism Methodological Individualists at Cambridge Role Analysis and System Theory 6. The Power of Symbols Introduction From Function to Meaning Ethnoscience and Symbolic Anthropology Geertz and Schneider Levi-Strauss and Structuralism Early Impact The State of the Art in 1968 7. Questioning Authority Introduction The Return of Marx Structural Marxism The Not-Quite-Marxists Political Economy and the Capitalist World System Feminism and the Birth of Reflexive Fieldwork Ethnicity Practice Theory The Sociobiology Debate and Samoa 8. The End of Modernism? Introduction The End of Modernism? The Postcolonial World A New Departure or a Return to Boas? Other Positions 9. Global Networks Introduction Towards an International Anthropology? Trends for the Future Biology and Culture Globalisation and the Production of Locality Bibliography Index