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ANTHROPOLOGICAL DIVORCE

tanford's 50-year-old Department of Anthropology will probably split into two separate departments beginning next academic year: the Department of Anthropological Sciences and the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology.

A majority of the department faculty expressed support for the division in early February under terms outlined by the dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, according to Hans Andersen, the associate dean. The proposal is now under consideration by the Advisory Board of the Academic Council and the provost.

Both departments will cross-list each other's courses, but graduate student admission and faculty appointment decisions now will be separated. The Cultural and Social Anthropology Department will have 10 faculty positions, while the Anthropological Sciences Department will have seven. "We asked the faculty who are there right now to choose which of the two departments to join," Andersen said.

The decision to divide the highly rated department comes on the heels of a much-publicized conflict last year over the tenure case of one faculty member, but reflects longer-term tensions rooted in diverging interests, methods and theory within American anthropology.

"This is a great example of how local processes are shaped by larger global processes," said Sylvia Yanagisako, acting chair of the Cultural and Social Anthropology Department. "American anthropology has since its beginning in the late 19th century had this uneasy configuration," she said. "European anthropologists have always regarded the situation as an accident of American history."

The intellectual issue for anthropologists involves "a basic disagreement over what constitutes science," Yanagisako said. "Physical anthropology is rooted

Anthropology Splits (Plain text)

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