Perceptions of “Intra-disciplinary” Unity and Division

Abstract

These “Thin Partitions:” Bridging the Growing Divide Between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology co-edited by Joshua D. Englehardt and Ivy R. Rieger seeks to reexamine if and to what extent the sub-disciplines of Anthropology have become disjunctured. Specifically, Englehardt and Rieger (2017) sought to evaluate the historical, contemporary, and future relationship between cultural anthropologists and archaeologists. The edited volume contained twelve single or co-authored chapters, which sought to engage with the idea of “intradisciplinary” theories as a viable tool for unifying theoretical divisions (Englehardt and Rieger 2017). Englehardt and Rieger offered a new and welcome perspective on a debate now spanning decades and across multiple journal articles, books, and special issues (i.e. Ortner 1984; Watson 1995; Gillespie et al. 2003). All of these works have focused on one central question: are anthropology’s four sub-fields unified in their goal of understanding the full breadth of the humanity? Conflicting answers to this question arise every few years as if to demonstrate the continuing ontological reflectivity woven into the fabric of anthropology. Ideally the “…roles, goals, and foci of anthropology’s four primary subfields [should] complement and weave back into each other, forming a complex disciplinary whole that is greater than the sum of its individual parts” (Englehardt and Rieger 2017, 4). The editors both argue that the commonalities within each sub-field’s history, theories, and methods define anthropology as a unified discipline seeking to understand the human cultural experience from different modes of inquiry.