Redfield first 24

I find Redfield’s work completely and utterly bereft of any color or interest, and a very difficult read, not in my understanding but rather my stamina. Giving a brief history of the evolution of anthropology, Redfield highlights certain events that were pivotal in the science. Using primarily second source material to drive his writing was permissible considering much of what he was doing in this part of the book was introducing the reader to the history of anthropology, something that would be difficult to have many primary sources on unless the secret to immortality had been discovered.  Redfield’s overall claim that the study has grown rather rapidly and is rather awkward (at the time of the publication) is reinforced by his brevity and motion through the given history, and the way in which he kind of stumbles around from topic to topic. However he fails to discuss key ideas and their evolution throughout the history of anthropology. For instance, Boas is credited with being the father of modern anthropology as he was one of the first to introduce cultural relativism and actually going to live with a given group to learn their culture from their perspective, as opposed to the ethnocentric and generalizing ways of yesterday’s scholars. Also not touched upon were the schools of thought that anthropology’s evolution bred like Unilineal Evolution and why it’s so wrong, Functionalism, Structuralism, Post-Modernism, and so on, all which are key to truly understanding the evolution of anthropology. That being said, there is not much to gain from this text if one is looking for a modern understanding of the field, considering how dated the text is, using words like primitive in contrast to civilized.