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Cultural Anthropology 101:

Preamble:
--Style: this book takes full advantage of character-driven story-telling, bringing the topic to life in an engaging manner which textbooks fail at. How I wish more talented writers would tackle the crucial structural topics siloed in academia in a similar manner�
…Of course, there are challenges with this approach, as the fantastic novelist Amitav Ghosh considers (focusing on the topic of climate crisis: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable; also see: Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures).
--Substance: so, let’s map out the structures�

The Good:

1) Context: Nationalism and Racism:
--I was impressed how well the historical context (of Cultural Anthropology’s emergence) was communicated:
i) European Enlightenment:
--There was a brief summary of the 3 trends (Kant vs. Descartes vs. Locke/Hume).
--Given this book’s topic and thesis, it’s a shame there was no section on the Indigenous Critique, the theory that Indigenous critiques of European settlers� social hierarchies, when brought back to Europe via Jesuit accounts (the European intellectuals of the time), helped stir the European Enlightenment. This was recently popularized in Graeber/Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (see later).
ii) European Colonialism and Science:
--Europe’s 1848 revolutionary outbreaks (the context of Marx/Engels� The Communist Manifesto) were suppressed, leading to increasing nationalist autocracy.
--We can add: the high-point of Europe’s “Age of Imperialism� was the “Scramble for Africa� (1833-1914), followed by WWI; see Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and Du Bois� connecting imperialist expansion to WWI.
--WWI escalated vulgar nationalism and xenophobia/racism.
iii) US Settler Colonialism and Anthropology:
--Meanwhile, the 1840s in the US saw the rise of theories on a secret “ancient American civilizationâ€�, with the infamous example of Mormons. However, Lewis Henry Morgan focused on the ancestors of the existing American Aboriginals, with particular interest in the former Iroquois Confederacy. Morgan’s connection with the past and framing of “s³Ù²¹²µ±ð²õâ€� of social evolution influenced Darwin/Marx/Engels in Europe, with Marx/Engels considering “primitive communismâ€� before the rise of hierarchy in the form of property rights/patriarchy.
--Morgan also influenced John Wesley Powell, who popularized “ethnologyâ€� (“science of Cultureâ€�) in the US under the “Bureau of Ethnologyâ€�. The US settler colonial context: the Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 was a further shift away from collective nations treaties and towards individual “w²¹°ù»å²õâ€� of the state.
…Thus, social evolution became a progressive direction of culture, from savagery (stone/kinship) to barbarism (clay/tribes) to civilization (iron/state). Powell separated culture from biology, while Social Darwinists tried to apply Spencer’s “survival of the fittest� Darwinian biology into a prescription for what society/culture should be.
--Tying US to Europe, “scientific racism� became mainstream in science/culture. The author mentions the popularization of “color�/“Caucasian� in science/politics. In the US, the Reconstruction Era was suppressed, giving way to Jim Crow segregation in the 1870s. 1890s-1910 saw a spike in migration to the US. US anthropologist Madison Grant published The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History in 1916, which was later praised by Hitler back in Europe (Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law), setting up the rise of fascism and WWII.
…To further tie colonialism to fascism (colonial practices returning home), see: Discourse on Colonialism

2) Challenge: Cultural Anthropology:
--We already saw hints of contradictions and challenges from the very origins of the European Enlightenment (“Indigenous Critique�?). Slavery was (eventually) abolished. There was the Reconstruction Era in the US. Morgan’s interest in the Iroquois (ex. matrilineal clan as human family origins) influenced Darwin/Marx/Engels. Further contradictions opened more space for resistance, which always exists.
--To narrate how Cultural Anthropology in the US challenged the above context, the author focuses on the following characters:
i) Franz Boas:
--Challenging the “scientific racism� of the aforementioned fellow US anthropologist Grant (The Passing of the Great Race), Boas and his students wanted to correct for the prejudice of the scientific researcher (where “culture� is the social construct of common sense):

After the war [WWI] ended, Boas’s professional problems only got worse. Science was a siren call, he felt. Improperly used, it would always draw policy makers into dangerous waters. He published an essay in The Nation calling out, although not naming, scholars he alleged had conducted espionage abroad under the guise of fieldwork and denouncing the use of anthropological research for any governmental purposes at all.

ii) Margaret Mead:
--The most well-known of Boas� students given Mead’s role as a public scientist, Mead challenged patriarchal assumptions by focusing on the cultural construction of sex roles (gender). Mead’s fieldwork involved participant observations, focusing on women/girls and their social education; Mead found flexibility, and theorized sex roles (from cultural borrowing/compromise/change/chance) led to sex temperaments (rather than the reserves).
--Curiously, Mead was at one point a partner of US anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who during WWII worked (apparently begrudgingly) for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, which after WWII became the CIA). The author doesn’t mention Bateson popularized the concept of schismogenesis, the creation (i.e. of identities) through differences, which apparently Bateson helped use during WWII to sow division in opponents. This is also popularized in The Dawn of Everything.
iii) Ruth Benedict:
--Another Boas student and instructor/lover of Mead, Benedict is more known in academia (esp. 1934’s Patterns of Culture), popularizing “cultural relativity� in focusing on the vast range of “potential human purposes and motivations� (rather than inevitable) and the need for the observer to have distance in order to review their own observational prejudices/assumptions (refer back to Boas).
iv) Zora Neale Hurston:
--African American female anthropologist challenging the lack of autonomous identity for African Americans especially women, with an interesting tension vs. African American social realism/proletarian male literature of Langston Hughes/Richard Wright/Ralph Ellison.
--In fieldwork on voodoo, “magic� is framed as setting patterns for a desired event (I immediately think of the stereotypical voodoo doll; the author also connects this to today’s gambling/stock market, as well as private property, i.e. expanding the self onto objects).
v) Ella Deloria:
--Native American researching Sioux society, challenging appropriation of “savage culture� (ex. connecting “physical fitness� with “racial fitness�, stereotypes used from the Boy Scouts to sports teams, etc.).

…The author frames this group of US cultural anthropologists as leading the revolution in cultural questions towards philosophy/religion/human sciences:
i) Natural divisions of human society? Challenging the “scientific racism� focused on inheritance/innate ability (where eugenics became mainstream and “progressive�), instead focusing on cultural learning/socialization.
ii) Universal morality? And how should we treat others with different beliefs/habits?

There might well be such a thing as a universal moral code, Boas taught, but no society—not even our own—has a lock on what it might contain. A given culture typically preens itself into believing that its foodways, family structure, religion, aesthetics, and political system are the truly logical ones. If there is any moral progress at all, it lies in our ability to break that habit: to develop an ever more capacious view of humanity itself—a widening web of beings who deserve our ethical conduct, whatever we deem ethical conduct to be.

…see comments below for rest of the review (“The Bad/Missing�)�