Editors' Introduction

An annual publication comes to its final form more gradually than journals with more frequent issues. Unlike a book that can be planned in advance around a particular theme, HoAA foregrounds the range and diversity of papers as a cross-section of interests at a particular moment. As editors, we welcome the annual opportunity to sit back when each volume goes into production and reflect on the state of the art, both in the issue just completed and in the histories of anthropology more generally. It is always a surprise to see just what people are working on and how the various pieces may fit together, and we hope readers find that equally interesting.

HoAA has held steadfastly to an editorial policy of accepting individual papers rather than assembling thematic issues, on the grounds that anthropologists (joined by historians and other honorary anthropologists) writing about disciplinary history need a place to present their work to an audience of anthropologists and others interested in the discipline. For many, perhaps most, of our contributors, history of anthropology is not their primary field. Rather, their anthropological practice has led to questions of historicist significance that need to be shared with colleagues. As A. I. (Pete) Hallowell long ago suggested, the history of anthropology can best be studied as an anthropological problem.

The twelve articles herein resonate with one another across intersecting dimensions: There are diverse national traditions, representing Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and Austria as well as the United States. Four-square anthropology is represented here by questions originating in primatology and archaeology as well as cultural and social anthropology; the study of language permeates several other papers rather than appearing autonomously in this volume. Institutions provide the focus of much work (Ranzmeier, Gray and Munro), as do changing assessments of theoretical positions (evolutionary implications of Algonquian hunting territory debates or of Russian village life as a focus of Soviet anthropology). Contemporary political implications of earlier anthropologies emerge in relation to colonialism and indigenous issues (Pinkoski, Hancock, and Hudson). Philosophical traditions and theoretical paradigms (Hume, Pulla) come together with the work of particular disciplinary ancestors (Radcliffe-Brown, Morgan, Lévi-Strauss, Boas, Wolf, Carpenter, and George Gordon)—some protagonists are known to all, and others are much more obscure. Boundaries of the social sciences and humanities prove arbitrary in early work on landscape (Harkin) or in the relation of myth and music (Launay).

Volume 7 includes book reviews for the first time. We encourage readers to recommend books for review—their own or those of others. Given space limitations we will not be able to review all relevant work but will seek to maintain some level of representative coverage. And we welcome Joshua Smith of the University of Western Ontario as book review editor.

We note with both regret and respect the demise of the University of Wisconsin History of Anthropology series with the 2010 publication of George Stocking's "self-deconstruction." The twelve volumes of the series (edited by Stocking and later Richard Handler) have included a great range of interesting and important work and contributed immensely to the professionalization of the history of anthropology as a legitimate subfield. The scope achieved when one peruses all of its volumes together is truly remarkable and bodes well for the future of the field.