George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (1987)

I read this extremely learned and (for me) fairly accessible book by one of the authorities on the history of anthropology for my project on scientific history. Most broadly, Stocking traces the shift from James Prichard's early 19th century "ethnology" to the post-Darwinian social evolutionism. The former was primarily an ethically motivated (intending to protect "savages" in the face of European colonialism) and Biblically influenced study that aimed to demonstrate humanity's common monogenesis. The latter, represented by figures such as Herbert Spencer and Edward Tylor, either assumed a monogenetic origin and tried to explain the great dicversity of cultures and cultural levels, or argued for polygenesis. My summer reading for my science of history project included this book; Daniel Moses, Prophet of Progress; Stephen Gaukroger, The Natural & the Human; and Frederick Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition. All of them illuminated, from different angles, the question of what I'll call, as shorthand, the "science of man." I've taken notes on each, but here I want to memorialize some of my own tentative conclusions. I come away especially from Beiser and Stocking thinking that many of the ingredients were in place for what I would consider scientific history, above all competing explanations of key questions and a norm-bound community of scholars. Of course, at the same time there were also deep challenges, having to do with individuality, the widespread belief that humans were sui generis, etc. In the case of German historicists, unfortunately, there was a turn away from these ingredients - away from common questions, away from explanation, and, as nationalism gained momentum, away from a single community. As I suggest in my notes, Ranke and others' "source criticism" may have preserved a veneer of scientificness, while really misunderstanding how science worked. And "common sense" may have added a further apparently indubitable warranty. In the case of evolutionary anthropologists, people like Tylor basically got it right, I think. However, as Carl Degler has shown in In Search of Human Nature, this approach was rejected from roughly 1900 to 1960, and supplanted by Boasian cultural relativism, largely for moral and political reasons. Since the 1960s and evolutionary - and theory-comparative - approach has made a big come back.

Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020)

The specific impetus for reading this book - beyond my general veneration for Putnam's work - is a project I've just started working on with my good friend Paul Lachelier. We want to place the current youth crisis - the anxious generation, the disengaged teen - in a longer-term context of capitalism and modernity. (Paul and I met more than twenty years ago when we taught the sophomore tutorial in Harvard's Social Studies concentration, a wonderful great books course focused on capitalism and modernity.) Putnam's latest book seemed right up our alley since it, too, examines our current predicament by placing it in a broader context. Roughly 125 years ago, namely, in the first Gilded Age, conditions were quite similar to today: wealth and income were distributed very unequally; politics were polarized and bitter; social ties were frayed; and the culture was narcissistic. Then, things turned around on all four dimensions from roughly 1910 to 1970 - this is the "upswing" of the book's title. In this middle, We-phase, there was much greater concern for the common good, stronger institutions, greater social capital.Since the 1970s we've returned to a second Gilded Age. Putnam and Garrett thus refer to the three phases of the cycle as I-We-I. Putnam's message is optimistic - if America came together 125 years ago, we can do it again today. Putnam provides plenty of evidence that the country indeed followed an I-We-I cycle. He also includes nuanced discussions of the more complicated cases of African-Americans and women. The book doesn't go into great detail about the Progressive Movement which launched the country on its turn from I to We. However, Putnam and Garrett identify several features of that earlier movement that, they believe, a new turn to We will also require: the movement was very broadly based, with innumerable individuals and initially small groups taking action, eventually inspiring policy change (Paul, who runs a non-profit dedicated to civic activism and "family diplomacy," will be happy to hear this); the progressives saw the challenge as starting with moral reform, not only of others, but also of themselves; women played an important role. I think in our essay Paul and I should reflect on whether these features are likely, or even feasible, today.