Anthropology and Mission: Towards a Historical Analysis of Professional Identity

Abstract

From certain recent discussions about the relationship between missionaries and anthropologists, one gets the impression that this relationship is to be judged by an 'essential' difference between the two. Some say that the missionary cannot be equated with the anthropologist as the former comes to teach, while the latter comes to learn (Abbink 1985, Beidelman 1982: 16 n. 34, Delfendahl 1981, Hughes 1978: 65). Often, the next step in the argument is that the missionary is guilty of a form of cultural imposition characteristic of colonialism (Beidelman 1982: 5-6). It is striking that in these discussions the concept of 'mission' is never made explicit; that both anthropology and mission, as .professions, are usually not studied in any theoretical depth; and that the historical transformations of both enterprises are often ignored and even explicitly denied in the case of missions (Abbink in this volume, Beidelman 1982: xv). It might be worthwhile to consider whether in the history of the discipline anthropologists have always perceived such an essential difference with missionaries. I propose to do this by means of an approach governed by the theory of professions.