Anthropology a students guide to theory and method

This study divides the history of anthropology into three phases: building the scientific foundation, addressing emerging issues, and a complete reconstruction. The first phase, from the late 19th century to the 1950s, laid the discipline’s foundation. The second phase, around the 1960s, focused on new theories and methods to address doubts about the scientific nature of culture and the reality of change and conflict. The third phase, starting in the 1970s, is shaped by postmodernism and feminist anthropology. A key argument is that, since phase two, a gap has emerged between our theories and methods, with recent theories moving away from science and aligning more with the humanities.