Freeman on Mead

pp. 257-262

in: I. C. Jarvie, Thinking about society, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Malinowski, legend has it, discouraged visits by other anthropologists to "his' Trobriand Islands — even if their purpose was to look into matters that he had not. He argued that since pre-literate societies were disappearing there was greater urgency in "doing" hitherto unknown societies than there was in "redoing" those already recorded. The reasonableness of this argument depends upon the theory of science implicit in it. A theory stressing that science sets high store by description and cataloguing would yield an imperative about the urgency of recording societies in danger of "disappearing". Implicit also is a metaphysic that presupposes 'societies' are the sorts of things that can "disappear".