Premium
The Ethnological Theories of Henry Sumner Maine 1
Author(s) -
ORENSTEIN HENRY
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1968.70.2.02a00030
Subject(s) - ideology , relevance (law) , morality , context (archaeology) , conservatism , politics , irrational number , sociology , epistemology , law , history , philosophy , political science , archaeology , mathematics , geometry
This article synthesizes Maine's theories, placing them in their ideological context and indicating the relevance of that context for modern anthropology. For example, Maine emphasized the group as the primal unit (not contractually related individuals) and held “primitive” man to be highly “irrational.” These and other features of his substantive theories, it is shown, fit well with his political ideology of “liberal conservatism.” This demonstration does not “disprove” Maine's substantive theories, but it should alert us to the probability that the theories, portions of which many of us now follow, have but a partial hold on the truth. Through studies such as this, hopefully, we may come closer to a theoretical “total conception” of society, which is, or ought to be, a “morality of aspiration” ‐whether attainable or not—of social anthropology.