Keywords
Abstract
This article analyzes the historical formation of the “Four-Field Approach”—a distinguishing feature of American anthropology—and its process of institutionalization within United States universities. It explores how the model, advanced by Franz Boas and his students in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, transformed anthropology from a practice of museum-based description into a fundamental academic discipline.
Relying on the works of G.W. Stocking Jr. and R. Darnell, the study examines why biological, cultural, linguistic, and archaeological sub-disciplines were unified under a single departmental umbrella in the US, contrasting this with the fragmented specialization characteristic of European and subsequently Soviet schools. The article argues that this holistic structure was not merely theoretical but a strategic institutional requirement that defined the professional identity of the American anthropologist.
References
Darnell, Regna. Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. (Chapter 2: “Franz Boas and the Professionalization of American Anthropology”, pp. 33-68).
Kroeber, Alfred L. Anthropology: Race, Language, Culture, Psychology, Prehistory. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948. (Chapter 1: “Scope and Character of Anthropology”).
Stocking, George W. Jr. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: The Free Press, 1968. (pp. 195-233).
Harris, Marvin. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968.
Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan, 1940.