RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND KROPOTKIN:
THE HERITAGE OF ANARCHISM IN BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Richard J. Perry

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

St. Lawrence University

Canton, New York

INTRODUCTION

"The Anarchist, Prince Kropotkin" seems an unlikely epithet for a man whose concept of society strongly influenced British social anthropology.

Yet Kropotkin's ideas were among the most salient influences on social anthropology during its formative years and defined an approach to enquiry that persists to the present. Apparently this influence has never been discerned or acknowledged.

Kropotkin has been relegated to a minor position among social philosophers. In his History of Western Philosophy, Lord Russell neglects to mention Kropotkin's name even once (Russell 1945), nor does Kropotkin receive any attention fromHarris in his Rise of Anthropological Theory (Harris 1968). Yet despite his personal obscurity in this regard, Kropotkin's ideas through their influence on Radcliffe-Brown helped set the tone of
British social anthropology during the first half of this (20TH) century. (Kropotkin has been doomed to share with his anarchist colleagues the onus of having traveleddown a "dead end" (cf. Jolls: 1965). Anarchistsfailed to achieve the far-reaching changes in societyto which they dedicated themselves, and as apacific anarchist, even the notoriety of a Bakunin
passed Kropotkin by. Only recently, as contemporary moods have shifted toward deep social dissatisfaction, have the writings of Kropotkin been given much serious attention (cf. Goodman 1968:519).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kropotkin's influence as a social thinker had much
more significance. During his years in England after his arrival in 1886, Kropotkin personified anarchist thought at a time when anarchism was in vogue. Aprominent and beloved social figure, Prince Kropotkin drank tea with Herbert Spencer, lectured on
geography and was called by Oscar Wilde one of the two happy men he had ever met (Pipes 1968:465).

In this era anthropology in Britain remained strongly evolutionary in its approach, and for a
time, the notion of "social Darwinism" enjoyed a comfortable acceptance. Radcliffe-Brown entered Trinity College at Cambridge in 1901. As we shall see below, the influence of Kropotkin's ideas did much to shape Radcliffe-Brown's approach to the study of societies.
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