Beyond social wholes? Introduction to part 4

Abstract

In Thomas Barfield's Dictionary of Anthropology, the entry for "holism" is laconically short. It reads, "Holism. See Functionalism" (1997: 240). Turning to functionalism, one learns that functionalism - apart from being an ethnographic methodology distinctive of anthropology," "a school of sociology," and "a philosophy of the social sciences" - is a "historical school of anthropology also known as 'British social anthropology'" (1997: 209). Holism, functionalism, and British social anthropology, one is led to understand, are synonyms. The reality is more complicated, of course.