While the term is often used in its general sense of a philosophical conception of human nature or the human condition, it now more commonly refers to two groups of academic disciplines, both closely linked with archaeology. Physical anthropology, which studies variations in characteristics of the human body, is closely related to the medical and biological sciences and has been controversially invoked in theories of race, by writers like Gobineau. Social or cultural anthropology, also known as ethnology, is the better-known branch, in which French contributions have been internationally influential.
In this sense, anthropology is the study of human societies, and therefore closely related to sociology. It has mainly focused on pre-literate or pre-technological societies which are often regarded as primitive, though many anthropologists have emphasized the extent of their similarity to modern industrial societies. The two broad directions of anthropological enquiry are the description and collection of data, often termed ethnography, and the theoretical reflection on it. In France, the two activities have tended to be separated. Many major writers have contributed significantly to ethnography, among them Zola, Gide, and Leiris, while theoretical anthropology has been particularly important in intellectual debate.
In the 18th c., philosophes like Rousseau and Diderot used the accounts of travellers to inform their work, though the specialist discipline of anthropology really emerged in the late 19th c. from the work of Émile Durkheim, who stressed the distinctive role of social structures in forming individual behaviour, and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who explored the relations between morality and customs, and proposed a theory of the evolution of human mind. These sociological and philosophical strands were brought together by Marcel Mauss, the first major French anthropologist, whose Essai sur le don (1925) analysed the practices and rituals of gift-giving.
Undoubtedly the dominant figure in post-war anthropology is Claude Lévi-Strauss, who blended ideas from linguistics, psychoanalysis, and Marxism to produce a structuralist analysis which aimed to detect underlying patterns in kinship relations, myths and stories, religious practices, and art. His Anthropologie structurale (1958 and 1973) and Mythologiques (1964-71) outline his theory in detail, while his autobiographical Tristes tropiques (1955) has became a popular classic. André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-86) extended the scope of anthropology to analyse prehistoric mentality in both existing preliterate societies and in societies accessible solely through archaeological remains. His conclusions are presented in Le Geste et la parole (1964-5).
Lévi-Strauss and Leroi-Gourhan established approaches to anthropology which have been widely followed nationally and internationally. Their distinctive contribution, springing from the French tradition they inherited, has been to valorize theoretical analysis over the description of data, and to assert that the ultimate goal of enquiry is to elucidate the nature and structure of the human mind. Both points remain matters of contention within anthropology and in wider intellectual debate.
[Michael Kelly]
