Publisher's Synopsis
In addition to his recent study "Victorian Anthropology", George Stocking's work includes numerous essays covering a wide range of anthropological topics.;The eight essays collected here focus on the emergence of anthropology, since the late 19th century, as an academic discipline grounded in systematic fieldwork. Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript materials, Stocking's work has focused primarily on Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, prominent figures in the American and the British academic fieldwork traditions.;Beyond their biographical focus, the essays in "The Ethnographer's Magic" touch upon major themes in the history of anthropology: its powerfully mythic aspect and persistent strain of romantic primitivism; the contradictions of its relationship to the larger socio-political sphere; its problematic integration of a variety of natural scientific and humanistic inquiries; and the tension between its scientific aspirations and its subjectively-acquired data. To provide a background against which to read the individual essays, Stocking has also included a piece that outlines the history of anthropology from the ancient Greeks to the present.;In this collection, Stocking has written a preface for each of the essays, as well as two more extended, contextualising pieces. An introductory essay ("Retrospective Prescriptive Reflections") places the volume in autobiographical and historiographical context; and an afterword ("Postscriptive Prospective Reflections") reconsiders major themes of the essays, in relation to the recent past and present situation of academic anthropology.
