IS SOCIAL-ANTHROPOLOGY INDISSOLUBLY LINKED TO THE WEST, ITS BIRTHPLACE

The author recalls that social anthropology has been linked since its inception to a dual process: the expansion of the West beyond the conf ines of Europe and the gradual westernization of the rest of the world which is directly or indirectly under the influence of the West. Anth ropology was born of two necessities. On the one hand there was the ne ed to record the local customs of the village communities and ethnic g roups which continued to exist within the emerging nation States of Eu rope. On the other hand there was the need to learn more about the way s of life and thought of the non-European peoples on which the West wa s gradually imposing its trade, its military might or its faith. For i n both these areas the same problem arose: the use of participant obse rvation, the essential means of compiling data on how preliterate soci eties functioned. Is then anthropology, a product of the West, exclusi vely at the service of the West? The author shows that, on the contrar y, from the beginning the discipline took shape through a partial shif t of its focus away from the western categories. Today, however, the W est is no longer what it was in the sixteenth century, and the author puts forward a definition of it in terms of a synthesis of four elemen ts. The westernization of the world is then seen as a reflection of th e expansion of one or other of these elements, or of all of them toget her. So the situation anthropology is in today has nothing in common w ith that of its birth. Since it came into existence, the discipline ha s undergone a series of mutations and has broken new ground, thereby d emonstrating that it is possible to construct a metacultural vision of human beings which no longer takes a particular culture as its univer sal point of reference. Social anthropology is no longer indissolubly linked to the interest of the West, its birthplace. It is not therefor e doomed to disappear as a discipline, nor is it suffering a general c risis, even though many of its practitioners are.