‘Life circle’ of anthropology: from positivist ambitions to the recognition of multiparadigmality

The article offers a brief historical overview of anthropology as a discipline consisting of several logically independent research traditions, and the evolutionary ethnology seems to be the first one chronologically. The author considers the competition of cultural and social anthropologies as based on opposite ‘metaphysical assumptions’ noting that despite different attitudes to sociology both have had a significant impact on sociological knowledge. Further, the article describes the formation of structural anthropology and ethnomethodology in the second half of the twentieth century as rejecting positivist scientific criteria previously accepted by Western scientists. The historical overview ends with the consideration of cultural and social anthropologies’ integration and the analysis of the multiparadigmality of modern anthropology.

cultural anthropology, evolutionary ethnology, social anthropology, structural anthropology, ‘primitive’ societies, cultural studies, research tradition, multiparadigmality of science